


lacunae

by ninemoons42



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Fluff and Angst, Forgetfulness, M/M, Marvel Universe Big Bang, Memories, Memory Loss, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Steve Rogers Recovering, magic-induced forgetfulness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2015-10-20
Packaged: 2018-04-27 07:15:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 38,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5038912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky Barnes, formerly the Winter Soldier, has been spending some time working through and around the holes left in his past, his memories, and his very self.</p><p>Steve Rogers has been trying to fill up his time post-Sokovia: he works with his new team, he tries to find himself, and he's still intent on looking for Bucky.</p><p>And then Steve loses *his* memories and is counseled to take some time off, and winds up running right into a Bucky that he kind of, sort of, very nearly recognizes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lacunae

**Author's Note:**

> ART:
> 
> paleogymnast | [HERE](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5038735)

ONE: STEVE

Dreams.

Acrid stink of burning metal, and the air groaning and shuddering around him. The weight of his shield and the weight of a girder. His own screams of effort, escaping despite his gritted teeth and his constricted throat. Salt in his mouth and salt on his cheeks, and the terrific crash of impact: a metal fist meeting his own jaw. Reeling away.

“Then finish it -- ”

In his dreams Steve never gets to finish that sentence. A bullet, a punch, a fall that is not checked, blood and bone lodged in his teeth, a chokehold, a blade. So many ways to be interrupted. So many ways to be killed.

So it is a profound and aching relief to be summoned from his sleep: he reaches for the phone even as he sits up. A room with a bed and a closet and a single small table; plain sheets and the barest hint of a window and a simple lamp that he doesn’t bother to turn on this time, because he’s more than used to getting dressed in the dark. He fights to keep the relief out of his voice. “Yes, Maria.”

“I didn’t wake you up?” Maria Hill asks, a slight edge of worry in that normally no-nonsense voice.

“No,” and technically Steve’s not lying. “Is there a problem?”

“There might be one. Better to brief you in one of the comms rooms.”

“On my way,” Steve says, and he ends the call. Hesitates, briefly, over his shield, which is sitting next to the door. A moment’s thought. He leaves it behind. 

The corridors of the new Avengers facility are almost deserted at long past three o’clock in the morning: two techs stumbling past and yawning over their tool kits and energy drinks; a single young woman coming up from the direction of the weapons ranges; four people in rumpled jumpsuits clomping up the stairs to the surface-level hangars.

He thinks he sees a flash of dark reds disappearing around a corner.

Most of the comms rooms are locked or empty; one, however, is lit up by the faint glow of the tabletop, and Steve pushes in and sits down and nods at Maria Hill. “What’ve we got?”

“It could be nothing, it could be a small thing, it could be a big thing,” is the brisk response, and how she looks so wide-awake Steve doesn’t know, and doesn’t want to know. “Gravitational anomalies and reports of lost time -- here,” she says, and she taps the table, brings up a map of the United States, zooms in on a portion that he recognizes as somewhere in the Great Plains of North Dakota. “We’ve had a few conflicting reports from our people on the ground.”

“That could mean literally anything,” Steve says, cautiously. “Do we have any better ideas as to what’s going on out there?”

“Still waiting on more data.”

“So this is -- a heads-up.”

“You might want to have your people clear their schedules for the next few days or so. And we’re quietly spooling everything else up. I wanted you to know what we were looking into in particular.”

“Appreciated,” Steve says. “Was there anything else?”

“Nothing you don’t get in that daily email bulletin of yours,” she says, with a shadow of a smirk. “I _was_ in Stark Industries, you know. I know about the gossip Tony and Pepper send you.”

Steve allows himself a brief smile. Search-and-rescue operations in Nepal and continuing reparations to South Africa, as well as tensions rising in the West Philippine Sea and an increase in military rhetoric in the Koreas -- mixed in with invitations to one or two elegant soirees and the details of a new daycare center on what used to be one of the Avengers Tower floors, not to mention bits of news regarding people getting married and divorced and set up, and new benefits for SI employees. It really is a mixed bag, sentences and paragraphs thrown together any old how, with a handful of clarifying notes here and there where he’s suspected Pepper either took some information away from Tony or added something of her own.

“We’ll call you back in if something else comes up, or as soon as we can finish sifting through the initial reports,” Maria says after a moment. “And by that I mean all of you, not just you and Romanova.”

“We’re not going for the stratified approach any more,” Steve says, and he gets to his feet and waves for her to precede him out the door. “We make decisions together -- we’d better, or else I’d be putting people like Rhodey to waste, and he still knows things I’d never be able to know. Same goes for Sam and Vision and Wanda.”

He doesn’t miss the narrowing of her eyes at that last name, and he shakes his head and lets the matter slide. 

“Have you heard from the others?” Steve asks as they go down a flight of stairs. He’s thinking about grabbing a bite to eat. The coffee’s always on in the cafeterias, and there’s yogurt and oatmeal to start his day with.

He’d often shared that kind of breakfast with Bruce, though Bruce had preferred green tea.

“Barton’s doing fine, the youngest’s just keeping him up nights,” Maria says, and she looks fond, briefly. “We’ve got some leads on Banner.”

“Don’t approach him,” Steve says.

Maria doesn’t answer him, just rolls her eyes, and he watches her take off towards another section of the facility.

The door into the nearest cafeteria squeaks and squeals as he pushes in: the harsh gleam of metal-topped tables. His footsteps echo as he makes his way to the coffeemakers: there are extra-large paper cups and he appreciates the warmth that soaks immediately into his hand.

Here, too, there is only a hint of a window to look out of -- he knows it’s actually a sort of screen, wired to a camera that does double duty for perimeter security and to provide eyes on the outside world. The screen shows that it’s raining outside, that it’s going to be an overcast kind of dawn with hardly a peek of sunrise to be had -- and he can’t help but shiver, can’t help but make a face, because he dislikes the cold and dislikes the wet and he’s still going to get wet even if he should put on a windbreaker and a pair of waterproof sweats.

A chime interrupts the downward spiral of moroseness moving into his thoughts, and he blinks at one of the kitchen machines and only just remembers that he’d set it to make oatmeal. 

There’s someone sitting at his table when he brings back a tray: his bowl, some dried fruits, a carton of milk, and a pale-gold apple. Red ribbon in her hair and a standard-issue SHIELD jacket; she’s shivering, and Steve looks around for something to offer her.

He settles for passing her his coffee. “I know you prefer tea,” he says, quietly, “but that’s warm and you can hold on to it until you feel like getting started.”

Wanda Maximoff tilts her head at him at the same time as she reaches for the steaming paper cup.

Steve smiles when she makes a face at the coffee. 

“I don’t much like coffee,” Wanda says, “or perhaps I remember that the coffee we had when we were children was _terrible_.”

“You’ve never had terrible coffee,” Steve jokes, “until you’ve had coffee substitute like the ones we were forced to drink back in the day.”

An inquiring eyebrow, followed by a tentative smile. “Tell me about this coffee substitute.”

“Chicory,” Steve begins as he slices the apple in two and offers her the larger piece; she trades him his coffee and before he raises it to his mouth she snaps her fingers -- a brief red spark -- and more steam wafts upward from the cup. “Thank you. And, you know, some people learned to love chicory, but I was never in that group. Didn’t taste right to me. And coffee was one of the few things I just wanted, you know? Everyone else wanted sugar and milk and chocolate.”

And he thinks of a certain _someone_ who loved -- maybe still loves -- chocolate, who would nevertheless offer Steve half of every bar he ever got his hands on, rare finds though they were.

“Rationing,” Wanda says, suddenly. “You experienced that, as we did.”

“Yes. A long time ago. More fruit?”

He watches her pick the golden raisins out of his bowl of dried fruit; she has a neat and unobtrusive way of eating, little bites and her fingertips lingering at her mouth. 

“They rationed butter and sugar and fruit,” Wanda says after refilling the bowl. “Well. Perhaps not all fruit. We made a game of going into the woods, looking for the wild strawberries. Sometimes there were none to be found, and sometimes we’d make ourselves sick from eating too much, and sometimes we could even bring some home to mother, and we’d watch her eat them.” She shrugs, and her smile is made up of wistfulness and a long-ago pain.

“I don’t know much about wild strawberries, sorry,” Steve says. “Been a city boy all my life.”

That, of all the things, makes her laugh. “I am sorry you have had such a limited experience.”

Steve grins, and shakes his head, and applies himself to breakfast -- and he lingers over his meal long enough to watch as Wanda gets started on hers. Toast, eggs, orange juice, and another golden-skinned apple.

Just as he’s about to get to his feet, Wanda bites at her lip, shakes her head, looks at her feet.

Steve blinks. “Something wrong?”

“I am sorry to invade your privacy,” Wanda says. “But you are broadcasting your emotions very loudly. I can hear your grief. Your loneliness. And it started when you talked about chocolate.”

It’s Steve’s turn to look away. “I -- I don’t mind that you know,” he tells her, honestly. “Since most of the others already do. Sam most of all, because before all this -- ” and he waves a hand around at the facility they’re sitting in, “ -- before Ultron, I was supposed to be looking for someone.”

“That person you are thinking of.” Wanda’s hands go still next to her breakfast. “He looks so worn down. As do you.”

“That’s a good way of putting it. I don’t suppose you could just reach inside my head and get the whole story that way?”

She looks startled. “I have not tried to do something like that before. I can access memories, ah, all at once. I cannot discriminate.”

“My story’s in all the history books,” he says, knowing that he’s failing at sounding self-deprecating. “Some of which I’ve liked, and read, and some of which -- well, let’s just say, I’ve had some practice at tearing things up.”

Wanda looks skeptical.

He thinks he can’t blame her at all. “Maybe some other time?” he asks.

“I do not know,” she says.

///

It’s almost a relief when Maria calls them all in just three days later -- but for Steve those three days pass restlessly, like walking across coals and shattered glass. He runs through sparring matches and training routines with half his mind on the world around him, and he sits next to Sam at mealtimes and picks at the food on his tray, and he can’t bear to look up into the understanding in Natasha’s eyes, or the worry in Wanda’s. 

The dreams continue, and the eyes of the man with the metal fist have no animation in them, no spark of life or recognition, no matter how many times Steve calls out a name. The man’s name.

He has to take a deep breath, and then some, when Maria motions to him to continue the briefing. Shaky legs. He forces himself upright, forces himself to speak normally. 

“This was more of a local concern three days ago, when I first received the heads-up from Agent Hill,” Steve begins. “But now there are dead bodies and we’ve been specifically called in to take a look.”

“I can get the gravity problems, I can get lost time -- that’s not stuff you want to send regular agents in for,” Rhodey says, after a moment. “But I also wanted to ask if we had other people to contact. Someone with actual knowledge of things like this? We’re not exactly the X-Files, you know?”

“We’re still trying to get in touch with Stephen Strange,” Maria says. “As soon as we can get hold of him we’ll patch him in on your comms.”

Rhodey nods. “Good enough for me.” To Wanda’s puzzled look, he adds, “Honestly, I don’t understand what he’s saying half the time, but he’s got this, this reputation, for being able to solve a lot of problems. Ever heard of him?”

“No. I would like to meet him,” Wanda says.

“That can be arranged, and probably should be,” Maria says, making a note on her tablet. “Tasks, Captain?”

Steve steels himself. “We need to get the lay of the land first, so that will mean Widow and me on infiltration duty -- closely followed by Vision and War Machine in case things go south -- ”

“As they so often do,” Natasha says, to ironic chuckling from Sam and Rhodey.

“Sam, Wanda, comms and oversight: Sam, we need you to be eyes in the sky, and Wanda, you need to tell us everything you can sense from the area.”

Nods all around.

“This isn’t the first time out -- ”

“ -- that one was just barely not a disaster -- ” Sam interjects, with a knowing grin, and Steve sighs and gives in to the levity, looking at his feet to hide a chuckle and the memory of his broken right leg.

“So maybe we can do better this time,” Wanda volunteers after a moment.

Vision seconds her with, “There is always room for improvement.”

“I suppose that settles things,” Maria says. “Whoever’s piloting the Quinjet, come with me.”

“Gear up, everyone,” Steve says, and he waits for them all to leave, before sinking into his chair for just a moment.

///

Heavy armor and -- at Natasha’s insistence this time -- a neatly packed parachute and its backup, another set of weights on Steve’s shoulders. Fortunately the drop isn’t so far, though they’re still falling towards trees and scrub and bushes. It would have been Sokovia -- it would have been their previous mission -- if only the sun hadn’t been blazing high overhead, hovering in a clear blue sky.

He blinks sweat away from his eyes and struggles out of his ’chute, and his body goes through the long-ago motions of packing the billowing cloth in for later retrieval. 

In the process Natasha finds him. Compassion and determination in those eyes of hers, depthless and dark even in the sunshine. He watches her turn off her comms, and move to do the same for him. An intense whisper, gentle and flinty all at once. “Tell me if you’re all right.”

“About as all right as not sleeping will make me.”

“That makes two of us.”

“Red Room?” he asks. He remembers the unshed tears in her eyes, and remembers a hoarse voice spitting out half-broken sentences. Dreams of the Winter Soldier and his own footsteps haunting the facility’s corridors. 

“Yes.”

“We’re okay. This is normal for us now.” He means to sound encouraging but the words come out flat instead. A painful statement of fact. “If I fail, you’ll take charge. And vice versa.”

“I never fail.”

“So I’m not worried.” Steve turns his comms back on. He watches her hooded eyes, her reluctant movement, as she does the same.

He says, “Everyone in position?”

A chorus of “Yes.”

“All right, let’s get this started,” and at the words he waits for Natasha to start loping over the rough, hard-packed ground beneath their feet. He watches her back.

///

He takes another step, and he knows he needs to wave Rhodey forward, and then -- everything _slows_ : seconds and minutes seem to crawl past, sluggish as molasses, as he turns his head and raises his hand, as the ground comes up to meet him and -- 

///

“He’s waking up.”

“Yes, I can feel him.”

Steve opens his eyes.

Resolving slowly: a pair of familiar faces. “Sam. Wanda.” It’s oddly easy to sit up. “The others?” 

“Vision’s about fifty feet thataway,” Sam says, pointing up into the sky. “He’s watching Rhodey and Natasha’s backs for us.”

“She radioed your location back to me and we came down here to see if you were all right,” Wanda adds. “How do you feel, Captain?”

“Time is moving normally for me now,” Steve says.

Sam raises an eyebrow. “You mean you lost time.”

“I think I did.” Steve looks at the nearest watch, which is on Wanda’s wrist, chunky shatterproof black. “Ten minutes. I lost ten minutes. It felt like less than that.” He looks around and the landscape is still familiar. “What did it look like to you guys?”

“Rhodey says he could see you signaling -- and then you just went straight down, like someone’d clubbed you in the back of the head,” Sam says.

“Because that’s not a familiar feeling,” Steve says, mostly under his breath, and it earns him a profoundly worried look from Wanda, whose fingers are sparking bright red at him. 

“You seem to be all right,” she says, after a moment. “Do you remember what you were doing? Did something happen in your mind?”

“I didn’t -- I didn’t see anything,” Steve says. “I suddenly just felt like everything had slowed down around me. It was taking whole seconds just to turn my head, just to raise my arm.”

“There’ll be more of this ahead,” Sam says, and now he looks grim. Steve watches him turn to Wanda. “Any chance you might be able to detect the next one?”

“I will do my best. For now we can ask Vision to mark the map with these coordinates, and those of the next one we find, if we find any more,” Wanda says, and then she gets to her feet and clasps her hands together. “I cannot sense anything wrong with the environment now.”

“Then let’s move on,” Steve says, and Sam steps away, extends his wings, launches himself back into the sky.

“Will you be all right?” Wanda asks, already hovering several feet over Steve’s head.

“I’ll let you know if something else happens,” he says.

She nods, once, and Steve tunes back in to the comms with a terse “Report.”

“Oh, good, you’re back in play -- I need you to catch up with us,” Natasha says. “Got a dead body here.”

Steve consults his compass as she rattles off bearings, and in no time at all he can see her and Rhodey, who is turning in a slow and vigilant circle. 

“Hey, Cap,” Rhodey says. 

“What’ve we got,” Steve asks.

“This,” Natasha says.

The body at her feet is -- _mangled_ might be a good word for it. Wounds hidden beneath layer upon layer of bruises -- the kind that comes from bouncing off multiple hard surfaces.

“Rolled here,” Steve says, eyeing the rocks beneath his feet.

Natasha shakes her head. “Not according to the blood, which is confined to the body and its immediate surroundings.”

“I thought the body might have been dropped here,” Rhodey says, “except the bones say otherwise, and -- ”

“And again, lack of blood splatter, I’m beginning to see a pattern here,” Steve says, nodding.

“Aw, that’s nasty stuff,” Sam says as he comes down into a neat landing beside Rhodey. “Where’d it come from?”

“That’s the problem,” Steve says. “We’re not actually sure we know.”

“Your attention,” Vision says over the comms. “Wanda and I have found another possible location of interest.”

“No time to bag and tag, just mark the coordinates again,” Natasha says.

Steve watches Sam and Rhodey take off, and this time he shares a concerned look with Natasha, before they lope off together.

They stop well short of the rock that is floating a foot or so in the air, and the neatly mirroring hole in the ground. Vision’s careful tread around the circumference of the hole, and speculative eyes on the rock.

“And this is why they called us in,” Rhodey says. His mask is up and he’s shaking his head. “This isn’t something you can train regular agents for, not for a while, not until we’ve got experts to call in.”

Steve would agree, if only -- “Don’t,” he begins.

But Wanda flicks red energy at the floating rock -- a coruscating spark that flickers all over the dark and dusty surface -- there’s a soft _crack_ , and then swiftly, soundlessly, the rock comes back down to rest in its hole. 

Steve steps closer, and prods the edge of the hole with the toe of his boot.

The rock crumbles into dust, just as silently as it had landed.

“What next,” Natasha sighs.

Vision and Wanda confer quietly with one another, and then she raises her hand. “Before we move on, a few words of caution might be in order.”

“Can’t touch any dead bodies, can’t touch any rocks, and -- ” Rhodey begins.

“And we can expect things to get stranger as we get closer to the source of these strange things.”

“I was really hoping you weren’t going to say that,” Sam grouses, scratching the back of his head. “I know how to fight people, or the occasional creepy-crawly thing, but _magic_?”

“We managed it against the Chitauri. Sort of,” Natasha offers.

A rueful smile. “Yeah, that’s the thing, right, there’s a _sort of_. No offense.”

“None taken. For now.”

Steve thinks, looks at the others, and nods. “Everyone who can fly get back in the air -- that includes you, Natasha -- someone fly her back to the Quinjet, please, then everyone double back here.”

“I’m going to pick you up, right?”

Steve shakes his head. “No. I’m staying here on the ground. The shield’s good against most things we’ve found -- I don’t see any reason why it can’t be good here. The rest of you stay in the air and try to see more than I can -- with any luck we’ll be able to find the, the epicenter of all of this and deal with it that much quicker.”

He’s met with frowns and much head-shaking. “At least let someone fly close enough to pick you up,” Sam snaps, looking like he’s just bitten into a lemon.

“Or let me walk in front of you to defend you,” Vision says.

“What he said,” Rhodey says. 

“I’m not going to risk any of you getting the same treatment as that body Natasha found,” Steve says.

“And instead you will offer yourself up to the same treatment? No,” Wanda says. “I will watch over you, since I cannot fly very far or very fast. The rest of you can use firepower and speed and maneuverability to fight.”

Natasha says nothing, only smirks and shakes her head.

Steve has to give in, and he does it as gracefully as he can. “I guess I’m outvoted. All right, defensive formation, don’t get too far out of sight, and stay on the comms,” he tells the others.

“Come on,” Rhodey says to Natasha, and he lifts her into the air and out of sight.

The salute Sam tosses off before he wings back into the sky is aimed at Wanda.

And Wanda looks at Steve with raised eyebrows once the others are gone. “I should have responded to him, yes?”

“You don’t have to, it’s just something we soldiers like to do to the person giving us our orders,” Steve says, and again the memory rises, unbidden, in his mind: a HYDRA agent going down to a precisely placed bullet. Himself, saluting a sniper’s perch and the barest glimpse of a blue coat with a wing on the sleeve.

No response from Wanda -- only the soft breeze of her rising carefully into the sky, with the air flapping at the hems of her coat.

Steve can see her, just barely, in his peripheral vision, as he sets his teeth again and starts to move forward.

The whine of the Quinjet flying past -- he can’t see it, but he’s familiar with the sound of its engines.

Quiet comments and acknowledgements on the comms. 

“Crest ahead,” Wanda reports.

Steve takes a deep breath and drops into a crouch of a run -- and when he catches sight of the rise itself he goes to his belly, crawling forward despite the dust and the sharp edges of stones digging into his ribs -- 

He speaks into the comms. “Come in on my position, but stay out of sight if you can.”

“Farmhouse, we came all the way here to find a farmhouse?” Sam murmurs, sounding incredulous, several minutes later.

“What were you expecting? A UFO?” Natasha asks.

“I honestly have no idea,” Sam admits.

“Scanning,” both Rhodey and Vision say after a moment. 

Rhodey adds, “Got movement on the second floor.”

“Multiple movements below ground level as well,” Vision adds.

“Call it,” Natasha says.

Steve gets to his feet and takes his helmet off. “Everyone watch my back. Wanda?”

“Here,” she says as she lands lightly next to him. 

“Get ready for anything,” he says.

Together they set off over the rise and towards the farmhouse.

Movement in one of the curtained windows on the first floor.

“We are weapons-free at this time,” Steve mutters, “acknowledge.”

The others respond, one tense word after another.

At the door, Steve glances at Wanda, who is holding her hands out and slightly away from her sides, trembling with readiness.

Steve knocks. “Hello in there. Is anybody home?”

Seconds pass. He knows because they pass in sweat dripping into his collar, running behind his ears. He knows because he’s fighting to keep his breathing even. 

“Hello,” says a quavering voice from the other side of the door. “You’re Captain America.”

“Yes. Can we talk?”

“They say I shouldn’t open the door.” The quavering voice belongs to someone young. High-pitched. 

“Who are they?” Wanda asks.

“The people in here with me.”

“Why not?”

“Because they know you’ll take me away. You’ll do bad things to me.”

Steve glances at Wanda; Wanda glances back. A minute shake of her head.

“We’re not going to do anything to you or to them,” Steve says. “We really just want to talk. We’ve found some strange things out there -- I think some of them were on your property -- we just need to look into what’s going on. There are bodies. Dead people. We just want to know if you’re safe.”

“Please don’t,” the voice says.

And then the door begins to creak open.

“Get out of there get out of there _get out_ ,” Rhodey warns.

Steve pulls his shield off his back and holds it in front of himself and Wanda; he starts backing away from the door.

“Movements clustering on the door,” Vision says, and out of the corner of his eye Steve can see him closing in, the bright yellow cape fluttering in the breeze of his movement.

“I’m overriding Cap as of _right now_ ,” Natasha suddenly snaps as the door starts to open. “Weapons hot, everyone, get ready to defend yourselves -- ”

The ground beneath Steve’s feet is groaning and rumbling -- “Wanda, run,” -- and Steve turns to follow her, looks over his shoulder -- 

The farmhouse cracks neatly in two.

The owner of the quavering voice is revealed to be a young boy -- and “they” are revealed to be shadows towering over him, vaguely humanoid in form.

“Watch out, watch out, I got glows, nothing good ever comes from glowing enemies,” Rhodey yells.

Pure instinct: Steve hits the dirt. 

Yellow and red energy: Vision and Wanda dodge attacks from the humanoid shadows, and fire back, and there is a rising wail over all of the noise of the fight, and Steve can’t help but look around for the source of it.

“Cap.” A quiet word over the comms.

“Nat, I got you, what is it,” Steve asks.

“Can you hear that screaming?”

“Yes, I can. Do we have more incoming?”

“No. I know who’s screaming.”

Steve scans the area: Sam and Rhodey, Vision and Wanda, all of them being pursued by the humanoid shadows.

No one is screaming except for the boy in the ruins of the farmhouse.

“Any ideas?” he asks.

“None,” Natasha says.

“Cover me,” he tells her. 

“Roger that.”

He rushes forward, shield held over his head, and at Natasha’s shout of warning he spins and knocks away one of the shadows -- solid impact that jars every bone in his body -- and again, as another one tries to blindside him -- and then he’s through the door, he’s next to the screaming boy, sheltering him with the shield. 

Steve tries to lower his voice, but he can’t help the urgency in his words. “Who or what is hurting you?”

“They are,” the boy says. “And you are. You and your friends.” The boy looks up at him and his eyes are as dark as the shadows swooping outside. “I don’t want to hurt. You’re hurting me. Want it to stop.”

Steve recoils, and starts to shout into his comms -- “Fall back, fall back, you’re hurting the kid when you attack the shadows -- ”

He never gets to finish the sentence, because the boy glares at him and says one word. 

“ _Forget._ ”

///

A blank whiteness inside his head.

He’d been dreaming every night, and now he can’t remember any of his dreams.

Had there been faces in his dreams? He remembered going to war. He remembered the _Valkyrie_ and the terrible crash and crush of ice all around, the creak and groan of battle, faceless helmets and grim aliens -- 

Something is missing.

He doesn’t know why he knows that.

“Steve! Steve, you okay? Talk to me, man!”

He blinks, and opens his eyes to familiar faces.

“Sam,” he says, “Wanda.”

They are sitting to either side of him, and Natasha is crouching next to his right foot. 

It hurts, a little, to lever himself up to a sitting position, but he can feel Wanda’s slender arm bearing him up and supporting him. “I’m all right, I think,” Steve says, after a moment. “My ears are still ringing, though.”

He remembers the boy, and he looks at Natasha, and he asks, “Was that you?”

A nod. “After the boy spoke to you I shot him with two tranq darts. Vision is currently watching over him.”

“The shadow things?”

“Went away when the boy went to sleep.”

“So we’re talking about someone enhanced,” Steve says.

“Someone like me, yes,” Wanda says. 

“We’ll need to talk to Doctor Strange for sure,” Rhodey says as he clomps over, still in his armor, but with the face-plate up. “Cap. You look like you’ve been knocked around but good.”

It hurts to smile, too. “I feel exactly like I’ve been knocked around,” Steve says. “But I’m all in one piece thanks to you guys.”

That gets him smiles from the others, and: “I don’t know why I keep telling you to run away from doing the stupid things, when you’ll just find a way to keep doing them,” Sam says, shaking his head, something that looks like fondness in the lines of his face. “I wonder if this is how your friend felt.”

Steve thinks of the looks on the Howling Commandos’ faces. “You mean my friends. Dum Dum and Monty and Jim and Gabe. Frenchie. Peggy.”

A raised eyebrow. “You’re forgetting someone.”

“Who?”

Sam frowns. “You’re pulling my leg, right? Did you actually go and forget the guy we’re looking for?”

Steve thinks, and comes up with -- nothing. Static buzzes in his mind, and a white blankness.

He looks up, and thinks he might need to apologize, though he doesn’t know what for. “I. You tell me I’m missing someone. I -- I’m not. I told you the others’ names. There aren’t any others. Unless you’re talking about you guys.”

The exasperation on Sam’s face slides sideways into worry. 

Steve sees Wanda’s hand twitch carefully in his direction -- and then she gasps, making Rhodey tense and go up onto his toes, making Natasha spring to her feet, making Vision hurry over to hover above them. “You’ve lost him.”

“Tell me, Steve,” Sam says, “does the name _Bucky Barnes_ mean anything to you? Or _James Buchanan Barnes_? The Winter Soldier?”

Again the blankness in Steve’s mind. 

And Steve shakes his head. 

///

They make it back to the Avengers facility in what feels like record time -- the Quinjet roaring as Natasha pushed its engines to their limits -- and there are worried looks all around him, and Steve is left feeling helpless and unmoored, wondering what he’s missing.

There’s no help in his quarters. Only a sketchbook propped up on the pillows on the left side of the bed, a neat tin of pencils and charcoals -- and the face of the man on every page. 

The same face, over and over again. The man in repose, the man with his teeth bared in a feral growl. The man peering down the scope of a sniper rifle. 

Steve runs his fingers over the lines of the sketch in which the man’s features are obscured. Dark goggles and a mask that covers his mouth and nose. Now the man looks like a demonic blank.

A knock on the door. Steve looks up and puts the sketchbook away. “Come.”

Natasha. She is frowning -- and as she comes closer she seems to look sad, too, sad in a way that Steve can remember from other occasions -- but he can’t remember her looking at him like that.

“Do you know who I am?” Natasha asks when she stops at the foot of his bed.

“You’re Natasha Alianovna Romanovna,” Steve says, promptly. “You didn’t tell me what your father’s name was; Bruce did, because he was the one who was curious enough to keep digging into Tony’s files. You came from the Red Room in Moscow. They made you think that you were going to become a ballerina, when they were actually training you to be an assassin. And you’re a damn good one.” He blows out his breath, then. “I know you, and I know the others.”

“You know the others. You don’t know all of me,” she says. She hooks a chair and turns it back to front before sitting down. “This is probably because there’s a lot about me that hasn’t been recorded anywhere -- or if it was, the file or files were destroyed a long time ago.”

“Okay.”

“Red Room,” she says. “What a nightmare of a place that was. Our instructors -- our keepers -- they weren’t exactly familiar with a lot of things. Kindness, for one, and compassion. I made my first kill when I wasn’t even ten years old -- and the girl who died at my hands was the girl who slept in the cot next to mine. I’d pinned her three times out of four and the rules were that anyone who was pinned more than twice was at the complete mercy of her opponent.

“The woman who was teaching that particular class told me to kill the girl, and I did. I broke her neck like I’d been shown by one of the other instructors. It was easy.”

Steve winces, and tries to reach out for her, but she pulls back, and she looks like she’s lost in the words and the dark echoes they’re calling up around her.

The room is suddenly colder.

“They taught us to do _fouettes_ , they taught us our arabesques, but they also taught us how to assemble sniper rifles. They taught us to kill people with needles, to put terrible poisons into their food and drinks. They taught us how to look helpless so that we could better lure our targets in -- how to play possum,” Natasha continues. “And every day, after the hour at the barre -- hours on the mats. Hand-to-hand combat. They never seemed to run out of things to teach us.

“When I was -- ah, I can’t remember, I must have been a little older -- they brought a different instructor in. He looked different. He didn’t speak. He corrected with mumbles and with gestures. He never yelled at us. And -- in a way -- he was kind. He was not like the other instructors, who could and did kill for a minor mistake, for a tiny flaw in form. Not him. He was -- not gentle, no one in that place was, but he was different.”

Despite the cold and halting words, Steve finds himself drawn into the story, and he asks, “Who was he?”

“I found out what his name was a long, long time after I’d left the Red Room, and until then I knew nothing but codenames.” Here Natasha shakes her head. “Yesterday you would have known exactly who I was talking about. Today -- I don’t know. You don’t know him. You don’t remember him. He was the only instructor I’d ever seen who had handlers of his own. They brought him in to teach and then they took him away at the end of the lesson. That instructor -- he spoke Russian, a little, when he did speak -- but his handlers called him the American. They called him the Asset. They called him the Winter Soldier.”

“Sam said those names all belonged to the same person,” Steve says. “And I’ll say that person’s name, but it doesn’t mean anything to me, not today. James Buchanan Barnes. Also known as Bucky.”

Silence. 

“Steve,” Natasha says.

“Yeah?”

“What did the boy say to you? There, at the end, before I tranq’d him?”

Steve blinks. That he can remember clearly. “He said, ‘Forget.’ That’s all.”

Her lips tighten. “Forget -- and you forgot him.” Just as suddenly, the frown is replaced by a tiny smile, that Steve thinks looks almost wistful. “So he was that important to you.”

“Is this supposed to help me or are you also trying to figure out what that boy can do?”

“Who says I can’t do both?”

He almost wants to laugh. He knows that much of her. 

He watches, then, as Natasha gets to her feet. “Come in and talk to us in Ops sometime soon. You look the picture of health now but we’d just like to run a couple of tests, see if you’re ready for the next emergency, when it should come.”

He raises an eyebrow in her direction. “You forgotten I’m a soldier?”

“I don’t forget much,” Natasha says. “And you’ve just been forced to forget something. Someone. It’s a little bit different, isn’t it?”

///

Steve sleeps, eventually, worn out by Ops and worn out by the stress of the mission, and he doesn’t dream. Featureless churning in his head that translates to another night of restless sleep.

He sits on the edge of his bed and puts his head in his hands.

His body cries out for sleep, and he can’t give it what he needs, whether he remembers or he forgets.

He thinks like he’s done something like this before, when the late night -- or the early morning that is so dark there aren’t even any stars left above the horizon, scattering wan light his way -- haunts him and makes him rise, makes him pace the corridors of the Avengers facility.

He’ll be talking to Doctor Strange later on in the day. He’s only got the scant information from Rhodey to go on. He might have known more had he consulted Tony, or perhaps Bruce, but neither of them are answering their phones.

Instead of getting breakfast at the cafeteria he detours toward one of the smaller gyms, and he stops and watches when he opens the door and hears heavy breathing.

Dark hair in messy plaits, and a t-shirt soaked through with sweat, and too-careful footwork. Wanda grunts with every punch that she throws, every kick that she aims at one of the heavy bags, and her plaits swing out with the momentum of her movements, untrained but graceful.

He wraps his hands carefully, in the corner, as she continues to pummel the bag. Then he gets one of the ice bags out of the little refrigerator stocked full of energy drinks and approaches her with deliberately heavy footsteps. Fair warning.

“You should have brought another ice bag,” Wanda says as she staggers over to one of the benches. 

“I can go and get another one.”

“No, no, go ahead and exercise, I am only teasing,” she says, and she gives him a tight little smile, and gestures in the direction of the other heavy bag. 

Steve sets to with a will: the suffocating blankness of dreamless sleep gives way to the vibrant rhythmic impact of his fists against leather and sand: speed drills, power drills, accuracy drills. His fists grow sore and he keeps going, the bag soon swinging with a vigorous rhythm.

He stops when he gets thirsty, and when he turns back to Wanda she has already retrieved not just an additional ice bag for her right leg but also one that she nudges in his direction.

In turn he fetches three bottles of energy drink and hands her one. He drinks the other two in rapid succession. 

Wanda murmurs, suddenly, “I dreamed of my brother.”

There are broken edges to the words.

Steve nods, solemnly. 

“Somehow I could run like he did. I could keep up with him.” She tosses back the last of her drink. “I woke up and he wasn’t there, of course, but I remember. He had such a smile when he was running. I think he felt superior to everyone else. Even me.” A quiet, bitter little laugh. “Of course, he was older. So he always felt superior to me.”

Steve nods, tries to look encouraging.

“And you?” Wanda asks. “What brings you down here in the middle of the night?”

“I...I don’t know. I didn’t dream at all. Some part of my mind must’ve thought that was too strange. Wouldn’t let me sleep.”

She tilts her head at him.

“A few nights ago you told me you could sense what was in my head, that there was someone there, that I was in mourning for someone.”

“Now his face is not in your mind.”

“Maybe it’s one way of going crazy,” Steve whispers. “Maybe that’s what that boy was trying to do. Make me forget -- I don’t recognize the face that I see everywhere in my room, I don’t react to the name, and yet this man I don’t remember was or is important enough that the rest of you know about him.”

“I am sorry,” Wanda says, then.

Steve blinks. “What?”

“I said, I am sorry, because I have been learning more about you -- I found some books about you, some newspaper articles. You said your story was -- easy to find.”

Steve makes a face. “Now even the books know more than I do. It does feel like going crazy.”

“Do you want to know what I can see in you? Now, tonight?”

Suddenly weary, Steve gets to his feet and approaches the heavy bag again. “Yeah,” he says, holding on to its weight with both hands.

“I see a blank in your mind, and I can see your mind trying to push that blank away.”

“I honestly don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing,” Steve says, and then he winds up, takes a deep breath -- and he punches the bag hard enough to send it flying off its chain. He doesn’t break the bag open this time, but just barely -- he can see the tear at the point of impact -- and he grinds his teeth in frustration.

When he remembers to look over his shoulder, Wanda is gone.

///

“Hello, Steve,” says the man in the red scarf. Rumpled hair, the beginnings of a salt-and-pepper moustache and beard, and kindly brown eyes. “Or should I address you as Captain, instead? I wish for you to be at ease, and to be comfortable.”

“Is this why we’re meeting in a break room and not one of the examination areas?” Steve asks as he sits gingerly on the other end of the sofa.

“That is correct. My name is Stephen, Stephen Strange. I’m quite pleased to meet you.”

Steve takes the offered hand. The doctor has calluses all over his rough and chapped hands. 

“I hope you will not mind if we begin with a little small talk, before we move on to the real purpose of our meeting.”

Steve dredges up a smile. There is something in that warm regard that reminds him of another doctor, another time-roughened voice. “It’s your show, Doctor, I’m just the patient.”

“Not _just_ a patient. No such thing,” the doctor says. “And please, call me Stephen, if you don’t mind.”

“All right. Stephen.” Steve twists his hands together in his lap, and then forces himself to still. He takes a deep breath. “I hope you didn’t have any problems getting here.”

He gets an unexpectedly sprightly smile in response, engaging and just a touch conspiratorial. “Fortunately not. That is one of the risks of opening doors in space and time, you see -- most of the time you’re lucky and you get to your destination in one piece. But sometimes, something else wants to use the door you opened, and then there might be some trouble.”

Steve blinks. Understands. “You came here through magical means.”

“Yes, I did. I opened a door in my office in downtown New York, and on the other side was this facility of yours. I received a brisk welcome from Agent Hill, and then she conducted me to this space at my request.”

“I don’t suppose you’d consider joining our team,” Steve says, intrigued.

An apologetic smile. “Alas for refusing you as I did Tony Stark. Most of my time is already spoken for -- for I, too, am a protector of this planet, this plane, from those who might wish to do it harm. I am at times available for a consult and that is what is happening right now: I was called in to speak with you, in particular about that mission that you and your team have recently completed.”

Steve nods, and talks about his personal experience of losing time. The dead bodies. The fight with the humanoid shadows. The boy telling him to forget.

“Someone on my team tells me there’s a blank in my mind,” Steve concludes. “And that my mind is pushing back against that blank.”

“Yes, and that brings us to my visit, and now I have most of the information that I need. I must make time to speak with your comrade as well. What can he or she do?”

“She can do -- unusual things,” Steve admits. “I’m not going to be the one to tell you about them, partly because I don’t actually have the words. You should be talking directly to her.”

“I will,” Stephen says. “And now, if you’ll permit it, I shall examine you. I promise I will try not to cause you any pain.”

“I’ve been told I’ve got a pretty high tolerance for pain.”

“Still. I follow the old credo. _Primum non nocere._ I believe in that with all my heart.”

Steve braces himself -- and all that happens is Stephen getting up from the couch and standing over him. Closed eyes, and hands in motion around Steve’s head. 

The examination, if that’s what it’s called, takes only a few minutes -- and at the end of it Stephen shakes his head and sits back down. “Would you like the good news first or the bad?”

Steve winces, and again braces himself. “I’d rather hear the bad news first.”

“Very well. I hope that there will be time for me to examine the boy who did this to you. The block he placed on your mind is both simple and complicated: it targeted the memory or memories that were most important to you, and more or less disconnected those memories from your mind at large. You might not have lost those memories, exactly, but they are inaccessible to you at this point in time.”

Hearing those words makes a weight drop right into the bottomless pit that is now Steve’s stomach.

“Am I ever going to access these memories again?” he asks after a moment, feeling nothing so much as resignation. More sleepless nights groping blindly for something he can’t remember.

“Eventually, yes, I believe so. That’s the good news,” Stephen says. “You’ll get them back, I can promise you that -- but the problem with that promise is that I cannot tell you when. Perhaps you can jog your memory, try to go back to the places where you used to go -- ”

“Stephen,” Steve says, “it’s not like I can go back home. Not unless you can carry me back in time.”

“Forgive me, I misspoke -- because I can’t take you back that way. But as I said, you still have access to the rest of your memories. You might be able to use those memories to fill in some of the gaps.” Steve watches as Stephen gets up and turns away, watches as Stephen clasps his hands behind his back. “Can you tell me about the places where you grew up?”

Steve blinks. “You mean New York City? In the 1920s, 1930s?”

He watches Stephen turn around and smile, now looking reassuring and kind. “Yes. Those places. I know that some establishments have quite stood the test of time.”

Steve chuckles, and blinks in surprise at the sound, and chuckles some more. “Too right some places are still there. You have no idea how relieved I was when I found out places like Nathan’s were still there, places like Katz’s -- I didn’t have as many opportunities to eat there as I would have wanted -- but I’d take the subway to get a corned beef on rye, if I thought I could get away with it.”

“I am given to understand that you are here at this facility for important reasons.”

“We’re here because there’s nowhere else to go.” Steve shrugs, self-deprecating. “The team can’t be based in New York because too many people remember too many fights in the streets. Too many things going up in flames. Lives lost.” He clenches his fists and looks down at his own white knuckles.

“You speak of the team,” Stephen says, “but I am speaking of _you_. Just you. And there is a block in your mind right now, a wall between you and your memories. I’m suggesting you go back, just you, and try to see if the -- well, a few places won’t be quite as familiar to you any more, but the things you associate with those places and addresses might be helpful.” Steve watched him pace a short round over the floor of the break room. “I can’t guarantee anything -- ”

“ -- But you’re telling me it’s a start. It’s all right, Stephen. I’ve been in therapy. It’s helped a little. And you won’t be the only person with an opinion on me and on -- well, places like Brooklyn.”

“Tell me about these opinions.”

“Some of the therapists think I should go back, and some of them think I shouldn’t, and then things like Ultron happened, and I’ve been shuffled from Manhattan to a farm to this place.” Steve shakes his head. “Not sure that even Brooklyn would be home to me, not at this point.”

“You don’t have to live there. You can live nearby.”

“When I think of New York City I’m always either looking up at something like the Brooklyn Bridge, or looking down at everything from hundreds of feet up in the air. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to just stop and live there.”

“That’s what I am suggesting. Not a vacation, precisely. ‘Medical leave’ covers it quite well. I have documents to that effect that I can sign and you can be on your way tonight, or perhaps tomorrow morning.”

Steve thinks for several moments. Thinks about tossing and turning in his sterile quarters, and thinks about going for long walks, or runs, in nighttime New York City. Quartering the five boroughs to look for old memories and new. “I’ll do it,” he says, eventually.

Stephen nods. “You’ll have to follow my advice rather closely: you don’t think about being an Avenger, you don’t think about SHIELD -- though I’m given to understand that of course they’ll be watching out for you. You may take your gear with you -- your armor and your mask and your shield -- but you’ll keep them hidden away, only to be used in times of dire need. You may change your appearance as you prefer -- you do have a rather memorable face.”

Steve sighs, and nods. 

“I’m not done yet,” Stephen says, holding one finger up in warning. “I’ve been told that you’ve been having trouble sleeping -- and that these troubles stem from long before this mission that has caused you to lose some of your memories. Before coming here I called in a favor from one of my contacts.” 

Steve raises a curious eyebrow at the orange-tinted container that Stephen produces from one of his pockets. It’s filled almost to the brim with anonymous white pills. “Did Agent Hill brief you on my serum?”

“She did indeed, which is why I had to call that favor in,” Stephen says with a flash of irony in his smile. “This is -- this is actually formulated for hardier people than you. Maybe they won’t work on Bruce Banner, but they’ll work on you. Take these only if you need to. If you need a refill, my number is on the label.” A quiet sigh. “If I might be so impertinent to suggest it -- I’d actually say you needed one of these, at least for tonight.”

“That bad, huh,” Steve asks.

“I am trained to find signs of fatigue in my patients, and it is my responsibility to bring them some kind of relief.”

Steve nods. “Okay.”

“Good luck, Steve,” Stephen says, and then, after a glance at the door, adds, “Ah, that must be your comrade. Would you be so kind as to handle the introductions?”

Steve blinks and goes to the door. There is Wanda, clutching her red shawl around her shoulders. A faint scent of flowers rises from her damp hair. “I am to meet someone here, according to Agent Hill. I was told to wait until you were done. Are you?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, and he ushers her into the room with a reassuring nod. “Wanda, I’d like to introduce Stephen Strange. Stephen -- Doctor -- this is Wanda Maximoff of the Avengers.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” and then Stephen says something in what Steve recognizes almost immediately as Sokovian, and a startled-looking Wanda replies haltingly.

He steps out, then, as Wanda sinks into a chair and starts asking Stephen questions.

The pill bottle is a surprisingly heavy weight in his hand.

///

“Heard you were leaving us for a while,” Rhodey says the next morning. 

Steve looks up from his breakfast -- two trays’ worth of food. Toast and oatmeal, an omelet and several slices of bacon, a tall glass of orange juice next to a carton of milk and a bowlful of fruit cocktail. He’d slept well, and dreamlessly, after taking one of the pills. He thinks that might be the reason for the return of his appetite.

Rhodey’s breakfast is modest compared to his: toast and scrambled eggs and a small pot of yogurt. 

“Doctor’s orders,” Steve says after a long gulp of milk. “For the thing that happened to my head.”

“That’s rough,” is the sympathetic reply. “Have you thought about where you’re going to stay? I can give you the address of this place in Manhattan that I sometimes use when I’m in town -- not too expensive, not that that matters to you -- ”

“Thanks, Rhodey,” Steve says. “Sam offered me his place in Harlem, and Natasha said she had a hideout on Long Island that she could lend me for as long as I needed it.”

“Spoiled for choice, huh,” Rhodey says. “So which one’re you taking?”

“None of them,” Steve says, smiling in apology. “I don’t want to be intruding on your spaces. I’ll try to find someplace to rent near the Brooklyn Bridge. Can’t be too hard to look for places in DUMBO or Vinegar Hill. I’ll start scouting around there.”

“Taking the F train -- you’re smarter than I thought. Never more than a couple of stops away from Katz’s.”

“Among other things,” Steve says, and smiling is somehow easier.

He still can’t shake that feeling of emptiness inside him, but he’s learning to live with it, to carry it around as just another weight on his shoulders. 

///

TWO: BUCKY

He comes fully awake as he’s rolling off the bed.

He doesn’t cry out this time.

And the hand that isn’t holding on to the sheets is empty -- clenched into a fist, but not around the knife that is sitting innocuously on the bedside table. Matte-black blade in a matte-black sheath. It’s there, it’s over there, and it’s not here in his hand.

He knows he hit the floor hard -- he’ll be nursing bruises on elbow and knee for a couple of hours -- but he only finds a rudimentary sort of relief within himself, enough to squeeze out a few tears.

He’s here. He’s alive. He’s not hurting anyone.

And there’s another memory come back to his fragmented mind and its broken edges.

His joints complain, just a little, as he levers himself to his feet and turns one of the lights on.

He stops just short of the wall and forces himself to look at it: forces himself to look at his own chickenscratch handwriting. Bits and pieces of yellow pad, torn up haphazardly, made to fit along a long and crooked timeline. 

The present day’s on the adjacent wall.

He remembers helping to build barricades. He remembers being handed a Molotov cocktail, and he remembers hurling it into a crowd of the very same people he’d just been working with. He remembers the near-riot that ensued, the howls of the students as they attempted to defend themselves and then as they were arrested.

He writes a phrase down on the nearest scrap of yellow pad: _agent provocateur_. He underlines the words twice, sticks it into place along the timeline, adds the date and location. _May 1968. Paris, France._

He remembers.

He’d woken up to the smell of burning petrol. The screams of a girl who’d been caught in a fireball, her left sleeve and left arm engulfed in flames.

Now he gets down on his knees next to the bed and tries to mutter. Tries to ask for forgiveness. Tries to let the past go.

The words don’t come to his lips.

He stays on his knees muttering -- he doesn’t even know most of the words -- a garbled mix of curses and prayers, Latin and English and several Slavic languages. 

He’s interrupted by a knock on the door, by too-cheerful words. “Hey, James, are you in there? I made pancakes.”

James -- the _Asset_ \-- the _Winter Soldier_ \-- someone who knew a man on a bridge -- rises to his feet. Crosses the few feet to the door. The room he’s renting is not very large. It’s just enough for him and the bed, and a couple of crooked and tilting cabinets where he keeps his few possessions. Tiled floor beneath, but he doesn’t feel the cold -- just the sudden rumble of his stomach.

There are five locks and one deadbolt in place on the door. They’re part of the reason why he’s here, in the small back room of an old row house that’s been converted into four tiny rooms for rent. He can smell river-scent on his pillows, and he can lock the door if he needs to.

More knocking as he undoes the locks and peers out.

A cheerful smile in a burn-ravaged face. “Morning. Breakfast. You need to eat.”

James gropes for the man’s name. “Wade.”

“That’s me. Wade Wilson. Your next-door neighbor. I got the room with a window looking out at the street. It’s a pretty street.”

“So you tell me,” James says.

“Come and eat. The pancakes are getting cold.”

“I like them cold,” James says, and he does, because then he can eat them with his hands, no need for utensils, because he’s trying very hard to avoid knives and forks. He knows how to kill with things like those. 

“Your loss. I’ll leave you a plate.”

Just in time, James remembers the polite words to say: “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Buh-bye now.”

Wade disappears from sight, and James watches the corridor for a long two minutes before he closes the door, before he locks all the locks and then checks them over. 

Bed. The bed is a good place for him to be. He’s safe there.

James wraps himself in his blanket, and he shivers. He’s cold. He’s always cold. He likes to sleep in a pile of pillows, and he sleeps better knowing he’s still not that very far away from the few weapons he’s got left. A gun, a handful of knives, his own metal arm.

Sometimes he remembers how he got that metal arm and sometimes he doesn’t: but there’s a section of the walls devoted to it. Care and maintenance and the fact that he has to use a very specific amount of pressure on his elbow plates in order to open the joint up for inspection. 

He remembers, now, that the first thing he’d done when he came here was scrape the red star off his arm: and now all that’s left of it is a square-shaped scratch-field, uneven cross-hatching. 

Another knock on the door. Wade Wilson again. “Any time today.”

What is today, anyway? James reluctantly unwinds himself from his impromptu cocoon -- it’s not a shroud, it’s not a shroud, he thinks as loudly as he can -- and looks at the calendar next to the door.

It’s 2015. He doesn’t always understand that. He thinks entire years passed him by. Maybe entire decades. 

There is a part of him that very vaguely remembers swing dancing, and people striking sulfur-light flames off the soles of their shoes, and booze of varying quality. Was that before during after Prohibition? He was there, wasn’t he? 

A memory stirs. Pancakes will have to wait a few more moments.

Here is some more yellow pad. He scrunches his eyes shut. Grasps at the memory with faltering hands.

 _Skinny,_ is the first word he manages to scrawl onto his page. _Asthma cigarettes. Blue eyes._

The page joins several others in a cluster. _Drawings._ The word _sickly_ appears over and over again, and it seems to be a contrast to the phrase about cigarettes. If one was sickly shouldn’t one avoid cigarettes? He’s listened to some of Wade’s tirades against the American health system. Flaws and fixes. The man’s got his head on straight, even if his vocabulary seems to be a little bit eccentric -- and filthy, to boot.

James has heard worse, in several languages, and can’t remember how he recognizes so many of them. Chinese slurs and Russian curses and far too many inventive turns of phrase in various dialects of Spanish. 

He breathes a curse out, in English. “Fuck my head and fuck my memories.”

And he goes out and knocks on Wade’s door for his share of the pancakes.

///

James goes to work most nights.

He’s damp under the collar when he arrives at the little Korean grocery -- a sudden shower -- and the old lady sitting at the till clucks over his slightly worse-for-wear state. “I will make you some tea,” she says.

“I -- no, it’s all right,” James manages. He knows how to be polite. He knows how to make himself pass by, unnoticed. He knows how to hide.

But when the old woman motions him to the rickety table and chairs in the corner of the shop, when she presses a cup of earthy, grain-fragrant brew upon him, he feels so much warmer than the drink actually is.

And she beams when he holds out the cup and it’s empty, drunk down to the dregs. 

“This rain,” she says as she brings him his refill. “This rain is very bad to be out in. So today you do not go out of the back of the shop. You stay inside the shop, you make them bring the boxes in to you. Then you can organize the boxes for me. You understand? You do not go out into that rain.”

“Little rain never hurt me,” James tells her.

“Not now it won’t. But I see you trying to keep warm. Come in for a cup of tea and look very like a kicked dog about it. I will be happy to keep you inside the shop if that will stop you shaking, but I will not stand for you spending your time outside when you do not need to be there.”

“Thank you,” James says, giving in, and he finds a way to smile back when the old lady beams and nods at him. 

“Come see me before you finish for the night. Today is pay day, I do not forget.”

James has money. 

He doesn’t know why he has money or why he knows that the money is in Swiss accounts, accumulating vast amounts of interest. He has no need for it. 

Neither did the people he must have taken the money from.

He has the money and he doesn’t need the old woman to pay him -- but at the end of the night, his hand sore from slinging sharp-cornered boxes, sacks of rice, and, strangely, several dozen cans of Spam and imitation Spam -- he finds himself smiling as she slides not just a tattered brown envelope over the counter, but a plastic container full of reds and greens to him.

“Kimchi,” the old woman says. “I made it last night. You can eat it after ten, eleven days. It will be good for a long time. Keep it in a cool dark place.”

“Thank you,” James says again.

“You need to _eat_ ,” the old woman says. “Next time if you come in hungry let me know. I can give you some food. Dinner. Okay?”

Why does everyone think he needs to eat? 

///

The cheap tablet’s screen flickers a signal at him.

James sighs, and shakes his head, and emerges from his covers. 

The floor is hard to sit on, but there’s only one electrical outlet in the entire room, and it’s on the other side of the bedside table. James plugs the tablet in and continues to read. A chase through lamplit Paris streets, and the unearthly singing of a choir of cloistered nuns. The weight of a little girl in an old man’s arms, and the unforgiving tread of an inspector’s boots on quailing cobblestones.

A knock on the door. “Can I come in?”

“No,” James says, and swipes to the next page. 

Another knock. “Please?”

“What is your problem, Wade?” James says, already putting the tablet aside.

“I -- I don’t think I should be alone right now,” is the oddly nervous answer. “I think I might be getting an attack.”

James blinks, glances at his knife, and gets up to undo the locks.

Wade is dressed in soft things from head to toe: a knitted cap, thick gloves and socks to match, a sweater with unraveling seams, and an equally worn pair of jogging pants.

“Get in,” James says, and he watches as Wade sits in the corner and wraps his arms around his knees.

“I took my meds like I do every day,” Wade explains, slightly muffled, “but I’ve got this aura thing going on, and I think I’m going to have an attack, and you might have to help me recover when the attack’s gone. Or if it doesn’t go away you’re going to have to call 911 for me.”

James thinks he might be worried, because why else would his voice sound rough now? “What kind of attack are you talking about?”

“I have epilepsy,” Wade says. “Most of the time I don’t get seizures. Most of the time. But today I’m seeing some things double and I know what that means: I know I’m about to get an attack of the shakes.”

Before he can think twice, James hears himself say, “What am I supposed to do?”

“Just make sure nothing bad happens to me -- oh, shit, I -- ”

And then Wade topples over onto his side.

James jumps onto his bed as Wade’s arms and legs shake in unison, his palms and heels beating spasmodically upon the floor.

Now he understands Wade’s gloves, Wade’s socks.

Red drops falling onto Wade’s sweater -- James stares at his bleeding mouth -- and then, as suddenly as he’d started shaking, Wade goes limp and quiet and utterly still.

James approaches him carefully, and moves him onto his side, props his cheek up on one hand, bends hip and knee into right angles.

He doesn’t know what the position is called -- only knows that it will help Wade to keep breathing, and maybe prevent him from choking on his own blood as well.

He’s torn between going back to his book and watching over Wade, because he has no idea what just happened.

And then Wade sits up and sneezes, and makes a face. “Bit my tongue again, dammit,” he says, cheerfully. 

James knows he’s staring, and knows he sounds angry when he says, “What the hell.” And he adds, “Sorry,” after swallowing down that pure animal bile that tastes so much like jagged fear.

“Like I said. I had an attack. Normally I don’t.”

“But you seem perfectly used to it.”

“Because I still have attacks even when I’m on meds.”

“Then get better meds.”

“There aren’t any better,” Wade says with a shrug. “Expensive fucking things, too.”

“And you still get -- seizures?” James asks.

“Fact of life. Hey, thanks for putting me in the recovery position. That always helps.”

Now he has a name for what he’s done, something to remember and hold on to for the next time it might be needed.

Wade shuffles, awkwardly, and backs toward the door. “I hope it doesn’t happen again. Usually that works. Sorry for spooking you.”

“What do you do,” James hears himself asking, “when it’s just you? When you have an attack and you’re alone?”

“Hope I survive,” and then Wade’s nearly out the door.

“Wait,” James says.

Wade freezes, one foot out in the corridor.

“Come here again if you think you’re about to have an attack.”

“No need, man, I’ve bothered you enough -- scared the shit out of you -- ”

“Only because I didn’t know if you’d be okay or not. But it looks like you could use some help, and it looks like I know something that can help you. So come and knock if you think you’re about to have an attack. If I’m here I’ll usually let you in. You don’t have to go through that alone.”

He doesn’t know why he has a need to say those things.

He thinks he can remember a voice saying those words.

Whose voice is it? His or someone else’s? Had James been the one to say those words, or had he been the one hearing them? 

His thoughts are interrupted when Wade tiptoes closer and says, “Thanks. Um. I’ll pay you back in pancakes, I promise. Best ones ever. You’ll see.”

James feels the corners of his mouth tug upwards. This is -- he remembers what this is. A smile. He doesn’t have much reason to smile. 

But he smiles at Wade and pats his shoulder, and when Wade’s gone and James can lock the door to his satisfaction he simply falls onto his bed and looks around at his timeline, at the pieces of paper strewn all around his feet, and tries to remember.

The voice that had spoken those words about not being alone.

///

There’s a weak spot in the fencing surrounding the nearest container terminal -- James found it on one of his late-night walks -- and now he knows just how and when to slip through so no one will ever see him, or know that he’s there.

Salt and splash and foam on the dark waves as the Hudson River slaps and crashes at the pillars holding up the dock. 

If he turns a certain way he’ll be able to make out the Brooklyn Bridge, though he’ll have to wait until morning to spot the distinct patterns of graceful powerful soaring cables.

He knows only that he’s been remembering those patterns for years. That he’s always thought of other bridges in terms of the Brooklyn Bridge. He’s been there, over and over again, walking the pedestrian path, watching cars and trucks and the constant blare of the yellow taxis flashing past beneath him. Smelling the river, smelling the city, smelling exhaust fumes. Whirr and flash of chain and gear, and the fact that bikers and pedestrians alike seemed to prefer to wear reflective tape on their backs.

Here, now, he traces the shadow-shape of the Brooklyn Bridge, tries to frame it in one metal hand and one flesh hand. Looming outlines and the streaking lonely lights of late-night traffic.

He gets to his feet, and runs, and -- 

Noise, just past him, in the narrow passage between hulking shipping containers.

James gets up on his toes, leads with his left arm.

Step one: and the sounds resolve into abhorrent echoes. The thud of skin against skin, or metal against bones and muscles and sinews.

Steps two and three: and now James can distinguish between the salt of blood being spilled and the salt of the soughing river waves.

James forces himself to un-tense. To un-grit his teeth. To step more casually -- to step more silently, as he climbs stealthily up the side of a shipping container, as he leaps from one steel surface to another.

He remembers how to move quickly, how to move unseen.

A patch of light. He skirts its edges.

He’s close enough to hear defeated whimpers -- he’s close enough to fall onto the four men with the pipes -- 

Confused grunts, confused cursing, and while the men with the pipes are still scrambling to get to their feet James is already working, as quickly and as quietly as he can: the crunching impact of metal against bone. He kicks each pipe away as he finds it, and his hands never stop moving. A punch to the gut. Interlaced fists against the back of someone’s head. Flash of teeth being knocked out -- 

A roar behind him. James drops, side-steps. Kicks his would-be attacker into the rest of his comrades.

“Get up again,” James says, “and I’ll take you all down again.”

Because of course he’s left them all alive: he’s hit them where they’ll be battered for days. No torn-out throats. His knives are still hidden away. 

“Who the fuck’re you!” one of the men manages to shout.

“No one,” James says. Then he leans over the man, gets a good look at night-shadowed Slavic features, and knocks him out cold.

Whimpering behind him.

James looks at the man who’d been knocked down by the others, still tense, still wary. “What’d you do to them?”

He can just about make out the words. “Didn’t do nothing.” 

“Didn’t cheat these guys, didn’t steal anything from them, what?”

“How the hell’d you know -- ”

“Just guessing,” James says. “They kicked you in for stealing from them. I should finish the job.” Not the mission. That’s long gone now. No more such things for him. 

“Don’t please no -- !”

“What you stole from these idiots,” James says, “gimme.”

A bloody hand, two wallets, a hand around James’s wrist -- 

James shakes his head and moves his feet and throws the bloodied man over one shoulder, a precisely calculated distance, so the bloodied man not only lands on his four attackers but smacks his head against the ground as well.

“Stay _down_ or it’s a knife in your eye,” James warns.

///

Two afternoons later, James arrives at the Korean grocery and immediately has to resist the urge to turn up his collars, or to hide in the back of the shop.

“Thank you for coming so early,” the old woman says, and the small cluster of girls in white blouses and tartan skirts parts for her -- and for him -- giggling softly behind their hands and their mobile phones. “A few guests for dinner tonight.”

“I -- you want me to mind the shop?” James asks. 

“Yes. Small bonus later.”

“No need,” James says, hastily.

“Or I will call you when it is time to eat.”

James nods.

More giggling, and perhaps one or two surreptitious stares from the clutch of girls, but they all follow the old woman through the door behind the till. James counts the steps heading upwards -- nine steep wooden steps, and a moon-faced mask with red dots on its forehead and cheeks at the top, seeming to guard another door -- before he squints at the cash register.

Hangul labels, of course, but again he has his tattered memories to thank -- or perhaps not -- for the fact that he can read the characters easily.

A woman comes in and deposits her expensive-looking bag on one of the chairs in the back of the shop, and James raises his eyebrows when the bag moves. A rustle, a high-pitched sneeze, and he’s suddenly looking at a white face and brown markings, intelligent dark eyes, and a twitching nose.

The puppy blinks at James, lets its tongue loll out, and it looks like it might be smiling -- and James almost makes himself smile back when the woman brings her shopping and her bag to the counter and the dog leans out of the bag to nose tentatively at his hand.

The dog scrunches up its face, sneezes, and James moves his left hand -- his metal hand -- away. Offers the dog his right hand instead.

The dog licks his fingers and yaps, softly, happily.

“He likes you,” and the woman hands over a bright smile with her bills, and James manages to dredge up an answering smile.

“Have a nice day,” James makes himself say as the woman attempts to balance her shopping and her dog in her arms -- and the moment her back is turned and the dog peeks back at him, James raises his hand to the dog, who yaps again and then subsides at a murmur from its owner.

James purses his lips together to prevent the smile from making it all the way out onto his face.

He’s ducking under the counter to pick up some coins that have fallen out of the register when there’s a man’s voice at the door. “Excuse me, ma’am, sorry -- hey, do you need help carrying that?”

“Thank you but no,” is the woman’s reply. 

“If you’re sure,” the man’s voice says, and James hurries to stand up at the sound of approaching footsteps. He checks the till, makes sure everything’s in order, and then -- he looks at the new customer.

And very nearly staggers back -- very nearly falls onto his ass.

Because the face of the man in front of him is -- more than familiar.

The face haunting his memories.

A skinny face, that was somehow changed -- James can’t remember how, but it must have happened and so much of it must have been real, because that face -- _this man_ \-- is now standing here in this shop. Separated by one flimsy counter --

“Hello,” the man says, looking apologetic and concerned and sheepish all at once. “Everything okay?”

James swallows past the sudden and painful lump in his throat, makes himself sound like himself. “Fine. Looking for something?” 

James wants to cry to scream to run to punch to throw his arms around this man.

What is this man’s name?

“I’m afraid I’m not really familiar with this part of the city -- been away a while, didn’t know there’d been a lot of changes,” the man says. “Should’ve expected them, though. New York City’s always changing.”

“Yeah,” James says, swallowing convulsively.

“I have a friend who suggested I come here, if I was hungry -- I could just get some take-out, or -- ”

“There’s food,” James says. He waves at the table and chairs in the back of the shop. “Lots of spicy stuff, though.”

“I don’t mind spicy stuff that much -- but I have to admit I’m a little bit more squeamish than some of my friends. They add chili peppers to their food when the food’s already spicy, you know?”

“Have you ever tried kimchi?” James asks.

“I know what it is,” the man says, “but I can’t remember having eaten it.”

“The old lady who runs this place makes all of her own,” James says. “You should try some. She’ll chase me with her knives if I don’t offer you any.”

The man laughs. “All right, all right, I’ll have some. I’m sure it’s good stuff. What goes with it?”

“Everything,” James says, and he turns away, with his heart still twisting and churning.

He remembers how to set the table, from observing the old lady. A place mat and a few small side dishes -- vegetable omelet and pickled cabbage and roasted peanuts drizzled with a sweet-spicy syrup. Paper napkins. A long-handled spoon and a pair of flat chopsticks, the flower designs on the ends already wearing away with use and washing. “Rice and soup with the spoon,” James explains, “everything else with chopsticks.”

“Got it,” the man says. 

“This is kimchi,” James says as he brings over a medium-sized earthenware bowl. “I don’t know when it was made but I have it on good authority that the older it is the better it tastes.”

“It smells pretty pungent.”

“Tastes better than it smells.” James thinks of the last container of kimchi that had been pressed upon him, three weeks old and less than half remaining. 

“I’ll take your word for it,” the man says.

Wordlessly James sets a bowl of rice in front of the man, the almost familiar man, the everything but his name man.

A door opens and closes, and footsteps come down -- nine soft thumps -- and then James is turning to greet the old lady. “What happened to your dinner guests?”

“Their favorite show came on, so I left them to it,” the old lady says, and then she adds, “Hello,” when she sees the man sitting at the small table. “You are new here.”

The man chews and swallows, and smiles, and it’s a more reserved smile now, or a more respectful one. James can’t tell. But it’s different from his earlier smile, from when they’d looked at each other with the counter between them. 

The man is speaking, now. “...came here on a recommendation from a friend of mine,” he says to the old lady. “Not too tall, usually red-haired, speaks several languages -- ”

The old lady nods. “I think I remember her. She sounds like she travels, does she not?”

“She -- yeah, she does a lot of that.”

“And she told you to eat here.”

“And your -- shop person -- over there,” and here the man waves his hand in James’s general direction, and how James wants to reach out for that hand and hold on to it somehow, “your shop person told me to eat kimchi. Did you make it?”

“I made everything you’re eating.” 

James watches as the old lady points to the dishes on the man’s table, tries to get him to pronounce the Korean words correctly, moves his hand on the pair of chopsticks for better control, and he’s suddenly jealous, suddenly burning up, because there’s a hook in his memories that is tied irrevocably and inextricably to this man who just came into this shop, and it’s tugging at him and won’t let him breathe -- 

“James,” the old woman says, suddenly.

He blinks and looks at her. Tries to look like he’s been paying attention to her instead of to the man.

“Sit down,” the old lady says, smiling kindly. “I promised you dinner. You can share the table with him.”

“I’m an idiot,” the man says, suddenly. “I didn’t tell you my name. I’m -- you can call me William.”

James just barely stops himself from shaking his head. It’s not the right name. The man in his memories -- the man he’s sharing this table with right now -- that man is not named _William_.

Just as James knows that he himself has another name, just drifting around the edges of his memories, the name that he’d once been called by this man named not-William.

James’s thoughts are interrupted by a hand reaching across the cramped table. “Hello, James.”

James takes that hand, and shakes it. “Hello -- William.”

It’s not the right name. He knows that with every cell in his body, with every frayed nerve and every tattered memory.

He doesn’t know how he knows.

///

Once he’s back in his room -- belly pleasantly full and mind unpleasantly looping in on itself -- he takes a sheet of yellow pad and writes the name _William_ , adding several question marks before pinning it with the rest of the memories of the man in his mind.

“William,” he says, softly, trying out the name, and wincing. It doesn’t _taste_ right. It doesn’t seem to suit that man.

The man he’s just had dinner with, if dinner means the presence of not only the old lady but also the briefly clattering reappearance of her guests, and where James himself had been greeted with giggling, “William” had gotten awed stares and a shy wave or two.

Despite the mad confusion of clamoring thoughts in his head James can’t help but smile, a little, when he tries to concentrate on the little things: William’s first bite of kimchi and his complicated reaction of blink and raised eyebrows and then a hurried gulp of water -- before proceeding to demolish the bowl. 

At some point the old lady had brought them some cold tea, and all but ordered James to pour -- but he’d reached for the pitcher at the same time as William had and their hands had brushed, just for a moment -- but that moment was like stepping onto a live wire. The good kind. Electricity sizzling and flashing through him, for a moment leaving him breathless and blinded and completely still.

How he’d managed to pour the tea after all is still a mystery to him.

Broad shoulders. Blond hair flattened by the cap that he’d been wearing -- and hidden in that pale mass a handful of stray silver strands. Something that the man has in common with James -- because James remembers living such a long time, has the evidence of that unnaturally long life tacked up onto these walls, and it hadn’t been a surprise so much as it had been a relief to discover the colorless bits. 

Lines in the man’s face when he smiled politely at the old lady’s guests, but what a fleeting smile it had been.

James thinks he might be the only person who noticed that there was something lonely in William’s eyes, and he’s torn in half between keeping his distance and offering his help -- it had been a miracle enough that William hadn’t flinched away from his left hand.

But what help could he possibly offer William? There are still days when he thinks he might wake up to the incandescent icebound hell of being hauled out of a tank shaped like a coffin. There are still days when hiding under the bed feels like the better option. There are still the long hours when he won’t sleep for fear of the nightmares that are full of real monsters, real evils, real horrors.

And suddenly James is exhausted -- suddenly it’s all he can do to cross the few steps back to his bed and collapse into the wrinkled covers, into the salt-stained pillow that’s survived too many nights of being punched flat.

Sleep seizes him suddenly, as though it’s got him by the throat and it’s shaking him, and he goes unwillingly, and the last thing he sees before he finally closes his eyes is the name he’d written down -- the false name that he’d pinned to the wall.

///

THREE: STEVE

Steve’s phone rings as he’s walking up to street level from one of the subway lines, and there’s a familiar name on the display, and he can’t help but smile as he swipes his thumb across the screen and takes the call. “Hello, Wanda,” he says as he dodges a group of young children swarming after their teachers: every cap identical and no two backpacks alike. “How are you?”

“We are doing well,” is the response, a little scratched and roughed up by the miles between him and the Avengers facility. “And you?”

“You picked a good time to call,” Steve says, and he stops at a red light and taps his foot to the bass-beat driving past. Music blaring from a top-down car being driven by a woman in a neat business suit. He almost wants to shoot Pepper a quick text message.

“I must confess to cheating,” Wanda says with a laugh. “Because I am sitting in one of the briefing rooms and I am looking at a satellite view of New York City, and I can tell you exactly where you are.”

Steve laughs and shakes his head and the children scamper past him, roughhousing as they cross the street. “Watch away. As long as it’s you, I don’t mind.”

“You may yet regret saying that,” she says, teasingly, before she breaks into her own laughter, rich and subdued and gentle. “Where are you headed?”

“Prospect Park,” Steve says, “you can see there’s this huge green space dead ahead of me. I have a book and a pencil and that sketchpad that Sam gave me before I left, and I’m going to try and see what’s changed and what hasn’t.”

“I take it that you are heading to an old park?”

“Just a little bit younger than Central Park, yeah,” Steve says. “Used to be a dangerous place. As I understand it now, not so much -- but don’t worry. I’ve gotten used to going about with a little something.”

“Natasha is teaching me how to fight with a knife. Sam too.”

“Pay attention to them both, okay?” Steve says as he passes beneath a wrought-iron arch, its dark lines delicately soaring against rich greens. “I think I might test you guys on that when I come back.”

“Which is not today, so I will instead tell you about how my hair looks like a deranged hairdresser has been at it. Hold on a moment. I will send you a picture.”

The thought makes him smile, even as he looks for a sign to direct him to the Long Meadow, and he turns in the same direction as a pair of rattling bikes. There is a cat riding regally along in the basket of the second bicycle, the slight breeze riffling its abundant fur -- mostly white with a very dark face and ears -- and he makes a mental note to draw that cat.

His phone chimes at him then, and he turns on the speaker and says, “Let me go and sit down so I don’t fall down laughing.”

“You are no comedian,” Wanda says mockingly. “Go look at the picture.”

He sits on a nearby bench, and does as he’s told -- and he’s grinning even as the photograph continues to load, because Wanda hasn’t been joking about the lamentable state of her hair. It’s been roughly hacked off in several places -- the right-side fall of her hair is at least a full two inches shorter than the left-side fall -- and then there’re also the bandages that she’s sporting on her forearm.

Last of all he sees her face, and it’s twisted into a horrible grimace.

“You could pass for one of those ghostly ladies that crawl out of the TV,” Steve teases when he gets back on the line.

“I am better at frightening people than they are,” is the arch reply, which is followed by more gentle laughter. “It is good to hear you laugh.”

“It’s nice to feel it,” Steve admits. 

“How is New York City?”

“Still not where I grew up in, though I’m currently living in a place just a couple of blocks away from the old rowhouses. Those don’t exist any more, of course.” Steve sighs. “They were torn down a long time ago. The art supplies shop where I used to stare at the pencils for hours on end is now a coffee shop, I think -- or they turned it into something like a cupcake bakery.”

“I am sorry,” Wanda says.

“You don’t have to, and I’m trying not to be.”

“Do you wish to be left alone with your thoughts?”

“Tricky question,” Steve says after a moment. “But thanks for the offer. I think I’ll take you up on it. I’ll try to draw something, try to clear my head.”

“All right.”

“And Wanda.”

“Yes, Steve?”

Steve musters up a smile. “Thanks for looking in on me today.”

“I can do it again. I will. When I can.”

“Yes, please. And thanks,” and Steve hangs up.

He’s looking at his feet and he can see the lit-up shadowed edge of an oncoming cloud -- not too large, just enough for a moment’s shade -- and that’s when he remembers that he forgot to tell Wanda about the man named James.

It’s nearly second nature for him to dig through his pockets for his pencil and for his sketchpad -- and he thinks back to the previous night, to a dinner that was mostly quiet but was also mostly very comfortable.

Strange that James had looked so much like a cat chased right up into a tree, the first time their eyes had met. Pupils shrinking, and then dilating, whites of his eyes all around, scared or shocked or something else that Steve couldn’t pinpoint now.

That skittishness melting away into a wary regard over the small dishes of pickles and nuts and kimchi and everything else.

Steve’s hand moves carefully, decisively: lines on paper. Here are the guidelines and here are the proportions. The idle strokes become bolder, become a profile. A strong jaw, and Steve draws it clenched -- in concentration? Frustration? Something about James makes Steve think of coiled momentum, of the sharp clarity in the instant before a gun is fired or a shield is thrown or a knife is unsheathed. A mess of dark straggling hair -- and even Wanda’s haphazardly cut hair looks much neater than James’s had. Dark shadows on the cheeks and underneath the eyes.

Those strange eyes full of fleeting expressions. Steve flips to the next page and concentrates. The fine detail of long eyelashes. He doesn’t have his colored pencils with him, doesn’t have ink or brushes or paint, but in the here and now he’s struck anew by icy steel, by palest blue, skittering from one emotion to another. What had he been afraid of? Why had he looked like he’d wanted to bolt and wanted to stay?

Another page. Those hands, practiced with chopsticks, aside from the initial tremor on the register and again on the pitcher full of delicious cold tea. Steve wonders what the man must have gone through, to have a hand constructed in flesh and bone and sinew, and one constructed in metal plates and joinings.

Steve imagines the man without his jacket, imagines him in a sleeveless shirt. Where is the metal joined to the rest of James’s body? He lets his mind wander, lets Prospect Park fall away, and when he blinks and looks back at the page he’s sketched James’s left arm in sleek metal all the way up to his shoulder.

Where has this image come from?

And why does it feel right to leave James’s sketched arm undecorated? It would have been prime real estate for a distinctive symbol. A star like the one Steve carries on his shield, or perhaps something that stands for strength or power or courage. 

Steve ducks his head, tries to hide the blush, but the moment he knows that he’s drawing his own shield onto the paper James’s shoulder he thinks it feels _right_. 

It’s a long time before he can make himself stop looking at those eyes on the paper, that expression drawn into tight lines, the hair falling forward into a straggling curtain.

Familiar eyes. 

///

“Steve? Steve!”

Click of expensive heels, coming up on him, and Steve smiles and turns around and there is Pepper Potts, bearing down on him and beaming, the brisk breeze whipping strands of bright hair around her face. 

“I didn’t know you were back in the city,” she says, “come with me, I was just about to have lunch -- ”

“I’m not sure I’m dressed for lunch,” Steve chuckles, and motions down at himself, his battered leather jacket over a plain button-down shirt and jeans, half-worn-down sneakers. 

“Oh, take the cap off and you’ll be fine,” she says, motioning to his head. “Just smile and wave a little, Happy and I are enough to make sure no one’s going to bother you.”

“Well, when you put it that way,” Steve says, and he gives in, smiling, and offers Pepper his arm.

“Pleasure to see you as always, Mr. Rogers,” Happy Hogan says, and then he adds, “Right this way, Pepper, do you want a private table?”

“Yes, please,” Pepper says, and Steve follows her through a door, past an attentive but surprised-looking woman in her starched and pressed suit.

He catches the flick-and-look-down -- the polite manner of staring, as it were, rippling through the room as the men and women went right on back to talking business. As though Pepper weren’t one of the most important people in the five boroughs, as though Steve himself were just an ordinary boy from New York City. Maybe it’s Happy’s glower, or maybe it’s Pepper’s cool smile -- but no one so much as makes eye contact.

Thankfully they’re quickly led into a small room, all warm light and polished glass and solid wood, and the waiter who’d led them in closes the door on the growing buzz in the main dining area.

“We’ll be all over the news,” Steve frets, politely, as he pulls out Pepper’s chair.

“Especially because Tony’s working for once -- or did he make that detour to Cannes like I told him not to, oh, well -- his loss that we couldn’t call him over. I think I’ll have the lobster. Steve?” Pepper asks.

Steve picks up the menu. He still glances at the prices first. “I -- do they have anything like a burger here?”

“Yes, they do, if you don’t mind shaved truffles.”

Steve smiles, shakes his head, thinks fondly of Jacques Dernier. “I should tell you about that time we spent a week of R&R doing nothing but look for truffles.”

“Bare-handed?” Pepper asks, leaning forward. 

“Sort of. Most of us only had our hands and feet and noses to rely on. Dernier got the pig.”

He tells the story, and Pepper laughs and laughs, and the waiter who comes in pours her a glass of water before taking their orders, and it all ends with Pepper carefully dabbing her napkin to the corners of her eyes. “You must have made someone very angry,” she giggles.

“At least the pig had a good time,” Steve says with a grin.

“Hard to imagine you grubbing about with your bare hands.”

“It happened,” he says, shrugging. “It was good, that time.”

She sighs, after a moment. “I heard about what happened,” she says, elbows propped elegantly upon the table and a fingertip tapping against her cheek. “Maria -- Agent Hill -- she gives me updates, you see. I share some of them with Tony.”

Steve raises his eyebrows at her. “So that’s how the Quinjets got upgraded. Again.”

Pepper nods. “We don’t have to be with you to help you.”

“We do need the help,” Steve admits after a moment. 

“And you, Steve? Is it helping you to be back here in New York City?”

Pepper is looking at him in that carefully kind way of hers, with her chin down and with soft lines in the corners of her eyes, and he can’t help but trust her. Can’t help but tell her the truth. “I’m thinking I may never get over feeling like a fish out of water. I know, I know, I’m supposed to be getting used to everything. I think I’m used to -- things like fashion and memes and sexuality and gender and racism still being a problem,” and here he clenches his hands, shakes his head. “I mean, it’s a disappointment.”

“It’s a real problem,” Pepper acknowledges. “It’s shameful that it’s still a real problem -- racism, I mean.”

“Just imagine the chaos if I decided to retire and give the shield to someone else. You, maybe. Sam or Rhodey or Natasha.”

“I’m sort of used to having the tabloids declare open season on me and on Tony -- and isn’t that a sad thing to say -- but you’re right, it could still get _so_ much worse.”

The food arrives, and Steve pushes the elegant little arrangement of microgreens around on his plate. Cuts his burger into more manageable pieces, and forces himself to take a bite. The burger is cooked properly and the vegetables crunch between his teeth. It’s nothing at all like the kind of food he’d had to eat, first in the impoverished streets of his old neighborhood and then in the mud and the muck of the Second World War -- and yet he misses the rationing, sometimes. Misses the food he’d had to eat back then, the now-nonexistent sweets.

“Next time I meet you out on the streets,” Pepper says as she skates a piece of lobster through an elegant splash of sauce, “I’ll take you out to a food truck instead.”

“Or we could go out for ice cream,” Steve offers.

“How decadent,” she laughs. “But you’re on. Definitely. We are so doing that.”

When the helpful waiter comes back to offer them cheese or dessert Pepper shakes her head and asks for coffee instead, and she insists on pouring Steve a cup. “You haven’t answered my question yet.”

“I don’t honestly know how to answer.” He reaches for the dish of sugar cubes and takes two, stirs his coffee contemplatively. “I just know what I’ve still got. I remember the Howling Commandos. I remember skipping stones into the Hudson River. The fact that there are _kinds_ of milk now.”

She smiles, encouragingly. 

///

Steve is in his kitchen with his head in his hands.

He’s one room away from Pepper’s tablet -- she’d all but pressed it into his hands when they parted after lunch -- and the tablet is currently chiming softly to itself as it runs through a web search.

Steve’d gotten so far as to enter the name that she’d mentioned. He’d hit Enter.

BARNES, BUCKY.

 _Do you mean BARNES, JAMES BUCHANAN?_ had been the search engine’s reply.

Steve’d said the name, out loud, and he’d felt nothing.

He’d hit Enter for the second time, then carefully set the tablet aside -- before nearly running into the kitchen. Before nearly knocking over one of the chairs at the tiny dinner table.

Bucky. Bucky Barnes.

Who was Bucky Barnes?

Steve casts back, as desperately as he can, and his memories offer him nothing but the hissed word: “Forget.” An attack, one aimed only at him, one that was meant to hurt him -- only it hadn’t done so physically.

An attack that scooped out his memories, his entire history -- scooped out his best friend.

He’s in the kitchen and in the other room, scant steps away, the tablet he’d left behind chirps happily to itself and goes quiet. Search complete.

Steve takes a step and he’s still where he is, still suspended in shock and disbelief.

He should call someone.

He should talk to someone.

He fumbles at the phone that is sitting like a ton-weight in his pocket and scrolls through the speed-dial list several times, aimless, and lights on one name, almost at random.

_Ring._

“Steve,” and it’s a warm and welcome voice on the line, the word framed by controlled breaths and the tell-tale rhythmic thud of feet striking the ground, steady running strides. “Can you hold a moment?”

He sinks to his knees -- to the tile -- and mutters, “Yeah.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Natasha says. The strides slow and then stop. 

“Sorry if I interrupted your run,” Steve says.

“If it’s you interrupting, I don’t mind. Truly I don’t.” Her voice changes, very gently. “Talk to me.”

“Bucky Barnes.” 

When Natasha speaks again, he thinks of her as going up on her toes, ready to leap to attack to fight. “You remember him.”

“I’ve been out here in New York trying to remember everything else that was gone, and his name -- came up.” He tells her about running into Pepper and having lunch, tells her about the web search and the alternate name that it offered him. “His name. James Buchanan Barnes.”

“We have had this conversation before,” she says at the end.

“Yes.”

“Go and look at the tablet, Steve,” Natasha says, firmly and kindly. “I will not hold any high hopes that your memories will come rushing back. But if you read what you find, if you read the trustworthy sources, perhaps you’ll find the thread that will pull you through.”

“Wouldn’t have pegged you for an optimist,” Steve jokes, weakly.

“I am a pragmatist, yes,” is the reply. “But I also have a friend who knows how to hope. Maybe you know him. Tall, blond, carries a shield around.”

Steve smiles, though he knows there’s no one around to see the expression, and says, “Thanks.”

“Call me any time. Or Wanda. Or Sam. We worry about you.”

“Thanks,” Steve says again, and hangs up.

Eventually he makes himself get to his feet, and eventually he makes himself return to the other room.

The tablet’s screen has gone dark, but when he taps it the search result has come up and there are so many pages waiting for him to read.

He stabs at a link at random. Holds his breath.

Historical analysis, preceded by brief biographical excerpts.

He looks up, once.

Out the window he can see the imposing silhouette, the well-known intricacies of its cabling, the Brooklyn Bridge towering into the gilded late-afternoon sky. It’s still there. It’s still the bridge over the East River.

He knows that he grew up in its shadow. The document he’s reading is telling him that he didn’t grow up alone.

“Bucky,” he says, testing the word out.

///

Steve puts the tablet away the next morning. His eyes hurt. Too much reading, and too many tears. After a while he’d stopped looking at the photographs. He can’t remember smiling at the Howling Commandos, at Bucky Barnes, but clearly there’d been evidence for those smiles. He’d looked worried and he’d looked happy.

He manages to dash off an email to Pepper -- one single word -- “Thanks.” 

Tears, again, falling onto the edges of the tablet, falling onto his hands, and there’s something in Steve that’s telling him, this isn’t the first time that he’s about to cry himself to sleep -- he succumbs, he lets it happen. The couch is just barely big enough for him. This isn’t the first time he’s slept on it either. Springs poking him in the back -- they’re almost comfortable. He doesn’t always sleep in his own bed. It’s too soft for him.

When he dreams, he dreams of a faceless man following him into trenches, into enemy territory -- and he almost expects that faceless man to be there in the apartment, when he wakes up with a start. A truck plowing its way to the bridge, its forlorn horn slicing through the quietly-falling night.

The apartment is empty. Steve feels hollowed-out. He dresses, mechanically. He avoids the few mirrors he has in the place, and washes the salt-grit away from his eyes and cheeks in the kitchen sink.

Out the door with a light jacket and his trusty cap. Collars up. 

He doesn’t know where he’s going -- but it’s a relief, sort of, when he finds himself on the way to the little Korean grocery. Wind chimes welcoming him, brightly-painted masks on the walls, and the usual profusion of colorful labels.

“Good evening,” the old lady at the counter says. “I remember you.”

“It’s nice to see you again,” Steve says, politely.

“Come to shop or come to eat?”

“Maybe a little of both.” Steve admits.

“Baskets in the corner,” the old lady says. “Tell me when you want to eat.”

“I will.”

He takes his time looking at kitchen implements and several brands of instant noodles. Multicolored sweets. He puts a box of rice crackers in his basket, and after a moment’s hesitation an interesting-looking chocolate bar, with pictures of nuts and fruits on the wrapper.

The old lady points him in the direction of the cold storage shelves, which are right next to the little set of table and chairs. Steve heads over. A welcome surprise: a container of bright red strawberries. He doesn’t hesitate in picking them up and bringing his basket over to the till. 

“Here is your change,” the old lady says. “Dinner?”

“I can -- sit here and eat the strawberries?” he offers.

“I will wash them.”

He watches the old lady close and lock the door to the shop before disappearing behind a door.

She comes back with a metal basin in her steady, wrinkled hands: and the strawberries gleam up at him, free of grit and dirt. He nods in appreciation. “Thank you.”

She flips the sign on the door back to OPEN and then goes back to her seat at the till, and that’s when he asks, “You’re by yourself tonight?”

“James has the night off. He will be back tomorrow.”

Steve nods, and eats another strawberry. “Then I’ll have dinner here tomorrow.”

And it’s a surprise when the old lady looks at him, and nods. 

///

“Rogers,” the voice on the phone says, the next morning.

Steve rolls out of more faceless dreams and musters up a smile. “Sam.”

“Nat told me you called her yesterday. She said you sounded bad.”

“I’m all right,” Steve says.

“You sound like I woke you up,” Sam says.

“You did, but I don’t mind.”

“I do. Want me to call back later?”

Steve sits up in bed and wraps the blanket around his shoulders. “I’m fine, Sam. We can talk.”

“Tell me how you’re feeling,” Sam says. Even though the words are obstructed by most of a yawn, even though he’s a long way away, he sounds capable and determined and friendly. 

Haltingly Steve tells him about the past few days. A website full of screenshots from the old propaganda reels. Soldiers following him into battle, and a bright smile. “I can’t remember Bucky’s face,” Steve tells the phone as he hunches in on himself further, “but it’s sort of like I can remember the smile, that it had been directed at me. I saw myself smiling back and -- ”

“And nothing, because Steve. I know. You don’t smile like that now.”

“I don’t know why you understand.”

“I haven’t exactly been where you are. Some people will say I’ve been worse places.”

“Jesus, Sam,” Steve says. “You know I don’t mean to belittle what happened to you.”

“Don’t wallow in it or you will,” Sam warns. “Focus on yourself, right now, and focus on what you can and can’t remember.”

“I just don’t know what the _point_ is,” Steve bursts out, and he surprises even himself with the vehemence in the words. “Why make me go through this? Why make me forget? What the hell am I even doing, back in a New York City that I still don’t recognize, that will probably never feel like home again?”

“Well, I can tell you _one_ thing you’re not doing,” Sam says, “you’re sure as hell not running around making me think you’re the Energizer Bunny with a death wish.”

“I remember doing that,” Steve says, “but I can’t remember the person I was doing for -- is that even normal? How does that even work out? I’m looking for answers, Sam, and it doesn’t seem like there’ll be any.”

“Got no answers for you, either, except maybe for this one,” Sam says. “I know who you were looking for, and so does Natasha. So does Wanda. I know, and we know, and we can hang on to that knowledge for you at least until that block on your memories finally goes away.” A short pause. “I mean it, man, and I’ve always meant it: I’ve got your back, and now I can say I’m not the only one. I can call them over and make you listen to them if you want -- ”

“Sam.”

“Steve?”

Steve tries to smile, though there’s no one there to see. “Thanks.”

“Any time. Oh, and -- ” There’s a brief scuffle on Sam’s end. “That was Wanda. She says she’ll try to look in on you soon, says you know what that means.”

“I do,” Steve says.

“And you do you, man, try to take a load off, and this’ll all blow over soon. One day at a time, right?”

///

Just before he has to leave for dinner at the Korean lady’s shop, it starts to rain, so Steve ducks back inside for a hat and for an umbrella.

The drizzle becomes something stronger, though there’s very little wind and very little chill. Steve is grateful for that. He’s never liked cold, and after long decades sleeping in ice -- not to mention days and nights spent fighting a war in freezing trenches -- he’s learned to hate falling temperatures and even the serene beauty of falling snow.

It’s a quiet night on the Brooklyn streets, and all he has to navigate are several blocks’ worth of puddles -- and it doesn’t take him long to get to his destination, though he has to skirt around the quietly steaming truck parked right in front of the little grocery’s entrance.

A truck that is currently being emptied: he watches an almost familiar, broad-shouldered silhouette carry crates full of cans, followed by several baskets of fresh produce. 

Steve steps closer, just in time to hear a quick three-way conversation in Korean -- between James and the old lady and the driver of the truck -- and then he’s safely beneath the store’s awning, and he can pull the umbrella closed and edge in out of the rain. “Hello,” he says, once the truck’s lumbered off into the night.

“William,” James says, with a small, close-lipped smile. 

His assumed name. Right. Steve nods and holds out a hand. “Want help carrying those things in?”

“Sure.”

Vegetables in profusion, and a fresh sweet earthy smell wafting up from the crate he’s picked up. The old lady holds the door open for the two of them, and he returns her greeting, before following her towards the cold storage shelves. Strawberries yesterday and something that looks like greenish-white radishes now, rounder and fatter than any he’d ever seen at any street market. Next to them the various greens of herbs -- things that look like scallions and chives. He takes a deep, appreciative sniff.

“Doesn’t make you sneeze,” James’s rusty voice says from over to his right. 

“I used to have terrible allergies,” Steve says. “Long time ago. I’m better now.”

“That’s good. Wouldn’t recommend you sniff this one, though.” The bag in James’s hands is sealed at the top and transparent down the sides.

Even from a foot away Steve thinks he wants to recoil from the lethal-looking red of the bag’s contents. “Do I want to know what that is?”

“Hot pepper flakes,” James says. “Can’t live without it if you happen to cook Korean food. Hope you like spicy things.”

“Dinner, right,” Steve says, feeling a little apprehensive. “What are we having tonight?”

“She was muttering to herself about Spam and sausages earlier, so I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that we’re having army base stew,” James says as he stows away several boxes of what look like folded tissues. “Guess it’s a joke she’s playing on us.”

“Spam, sausages, army base stew,” Steve echoes. “I have no idea what to think about that.”

“I have. It’s good stuff. Don’t let the name scare you off.”

The old lady reappears, then, moving out from behind the till to flip the sign on the front door to CLOSED. “You go up,” she says, pointing at the door that she’d emerged from. “Leave your shoes down here.”

“Yeah,” Steve thinks he hears James say. 

“I have no idea what to do,” Steve says as he unlaces his boots. “Do you mind if I follow your lead?”

“I’ll try not to steer you wrong,” James says, and he leads the way up a flight of steps, past a startlingly oversized flatscreen TV and towards a low table surrounded by plump, lavender-striped cushions. 

“Taught you how to use the spoon and the chopsticks last time,” James says after sitting down.

Steve folds himself into a cross-legged sitting position with a little difficulty, and wipes his hands off on his knees. Arranged neatly on a blue-piped mat before him are cutlery and several small bowls. 

The old lady comes bustling up the stairs, and Steve smiles at her as she closes the door. “Now we will not be disturbed,” she says, beaming, and she sits down and reaches into a small metal basin on a nearby shelf. “Clean your hands,” she says, offering small white towels around the table, tight rolls that smell of flowers and clean cotton.

“Thank you,” James says.

“You call me by my name, here in my home,” the old lady says. “I am Seo-yeong.”

Steve immediately offers his hand to shake. “I’m William,” he says. The false name comes more easily to his lips this time. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Did James tell you what we are having tonight?”

“He called it army base stew.”

“An unromantic name. But it is good food for this weather.” Seo-yeong gets to her feet and disappears into what Steve thinks must be the kitchen.

He nearly rises himself, but James stops him with a thin smirk. “In here she’s the boss, and no one does things for her,” he explains.

Steve blinks, bemused -- but that state lasts only until Seo-yeong returns, carrying a portable stove, which she lights with completely steady hands. When the flame burns a brightly intense blue she turns her back on it, and returns to the kitchen, and the covered pot in her hands wreathes her smiling face in steam and spicy smells.

The lid comes off on red-tinged broth on the boil, on vegetables and meat piled artistically together, on noodles and -- Steve squints -- a slice of processed cheese.

Again Seo-yeong emerges from the kitchen, and this time she’s carrying three covered metal bowls. “White and brown rice, and peas,” she explains, as Steve uncovers his. 

James promptly takes up his chopsticks and starts scooping things into his rice bowl, and Steve follows suit: there is sausage, as promised. He sniffs at the thin slice of Spam that he gets and it doesn’t smell like salt any more -- it smells like rich broth and green onions. 

Seo-yeong helps herself to one of the other bowls -- it smells like more spices and the bright waft of raw garlic -- and Steve puts some of the mixture on his rice, and takes a bite.

He almost immediately has to sneeze: once, twice, forcefully. It leaves him with watering eyes and a slightly runny nose. 

Seo-yeong laughs and passes him another towel to wipe his face with.

James grins, shakes his head, continues eating.

Undeterred, Steve reaches for more food: and it’s all good. Chunks of pork and sausage, and the slippery surprise of tofu. Cabbage, both the regular kind and the kimchi kind, and richly meaty mushrooms. There are actually two kinds of noodles: one that he’s familiar with from the instant stuff downstairs in the store, and another kind that’s transparent and much more slippery. 

Steve’s not the first one to ask for seconds on the rice, but he’s not far behind James, and even Seo-yeong nods in both amusement and pride when they actually manage to empty the shallow pot. Steve even ladles the last of the by-now hellishly spicy broth onto the sticky remains of the rice in his metal bowl, turning the grains a richly variegated red.

“You are good dinner guests,” Seo-yeong says when she turns the flame on the portable stove off at last. 

“It was a very good dinner,” Steve says, mopping the sweat from his forehead with a previously used cotton towel. “So good that I have no idea how to pay you back for it.”

“I can tell you how,” she says. “Go out for a walk with James, take a turn around the block. Or stop at that park two corners down. I wash the dishes while you’re gone.”

“Are you sure you don’t want help?”

“Never needed it,” Seo-yeong says.

Suddenly there’s nothing Steve wants more than to shuffle his feet -- but of course he’s still sitting down, and feeling a little overheated with all the spices he’s eaten with his dinner.

“A walk sounds nice.” James sounds perfectly neutral as he gets to his feet and bangs his fist lightly on his knees and lower legs. “I’ll sit in the shop until closing time.”

“You will,” Seo-yeong says as she leaves with the empty pan that had held their dinner.

Down the stairs, into his shoes, out the door that still has its sign turned to CLOSED, and Steve studiously puts his hands into his pockets, studiously doesn’t look at the face of the man strolling along beside him.

“Want to go to the docks?” James asks. “I know a way into one of those industrial places. Even New York’s rivers look pretty at night -- ”

“ -- If you don’t look too closely,” Steve finishes, still studying his feet. “Yeah. Lead on.”

He follows James down several streets and crosswalks, past dimly lit playgrounds and homes full of bright light, and tries to parse the situation: and then is it just him or is James also watching him? 

They’re within earshot of river currents when James asks, “Who did you lose?”

Steve stops dead, and looks right at James. “How did you know?”

“Maybe I’m familiar with the expression on your face. Familiar like I see it in the mirror every day familiar.”

“Who did _you_ lose?”

“I asked you first,” James says, smirking thinly. 

Steve sighs, lets his shoulders fall. Tries to vastly simplify a story with layers upon layers of _complicated_. “I think I’ve lost some of my memories.” He stops, thinks, makes a face. “Hard to explain how it happened, and you might never believe it,” he continues. “But I’ve been told by my friends, by people who know better, that I’m missing something, someone, important.”

“That’s rough,” James says, and Steve looks up at him again. At the shadow-faint but sincere sympathy in those eyes. “Is there no way of getting your memories back?”

“Apparently I have to give it time,” Steve says. “How long I’ve got to wait is anyone’s guess.” He follows James over to a pile of crates and sits down. “And you?”

“Sort of like your problem, only I don’t know if it’s better or worse now.”

“Because?”

“Because there was a very long time in which I was missing my memories, and now they’re coming back, in bits and pieces, and the problem with that is. They’re not all exactly -- puppies and kittens and sunshine.”

Steve eyes James’s left hand. “You served in a war, didn’t you.”

“I served. Sort of. The details are -- classified,” James says, haltingly.

Steve nods, once. “Yeah. It’s always something like that.”

“Sucks,” James mutters after a moment.

“Yes.”

Steve pulls his collars up around his ears when the river breeze begins to stiffen -- and his hands stop dead when James says, very quietly, “You look like someone I know. Knew.”

“I -- I’m sorry,” Steve says. “Am I -- this sounds so stupidly patronizing and I really hope you don’t take this the wrong way -- but am I, is my presence hurting you?” He throws his hands up in defeat. “Never mind. Forget I asked. But I can go if you want.”

“You don’t have to leave,” James says, after a long moment.

“Oh. Okay.” 

“Tell me about these friends of yours,” James says.

That makes Steve smile. “Where do I even start?”

“The ones who are closest to you.”

“Well. There’s this really great lady,” Steve begins. “Spends a lot of time being, ah, a gymnast. And also a ballet dancer.” He thinks about Natasha fighting with almost supernatural grace, about kicking with pointed toes, about speaking volumes with just one look. “She’s lived all over the world, you know, doing all kinds of things I don’t dare ask about. Always has the best stories to tell. And -- well, if you go to her for advice she’ll really give you something to think about. She’s -- she’s good for the sanity, you know?”

James is smirking again. “And you’re not interested in her. I can tell.”

“No, and I wouldn’t dare -- she’s with one of my friends, I’d only be asking to get ten kinds of shit beaten out of me.”

James laughs softly.

“There’s another girl,” Steve continues. “She’s -- she sort of keeps herself to herself. I’ve got my ghosts, she’s got hers, and somehow she manages to keep going without complaining too much. Got a damned good voice -- she sings, sometimes, and the songs always sound so sad but so beautiful at the same time.” He tries to remember the last time he’d heard Wanda sing: richly trembling refrains. “Before you ask -- no, I don’t understand a word.”

“That one taken, too?”

“If not now, then soon,” and he thinks of Wanda’s few smiles, a flash of light in her eyes, and the presence of Vision by her side.

“Aren’t you just unlucky.”

Before Steve can react, James has both of his hands up in the air. “Sorry. That was mean of me.”

“No offense taken,” Steve says, trying to reassure him. “I’m just in a bad place for a relationship of any kind right now. I’m lucky I have friends, or as I sometimes call them right to their faces, people who are kind enough to put up with my bullshit.” He chuckles, quietly. “You have no idea the looks on their faces they get whenever I say that, though. Somewhere between mortally offended and I’m probably going to die -- and also, sympathy. I get a lot of that these days.”

“Same here.”

“From your friends?”

“Friend,” James corrects. “Which reminds me -- gimme a sec, okay?”

He watches James fumble out a mobile phone and dial a number -- and then: “Wade? Wade. It’s me. Pick up the fucking phone, Wade. Are you even still alive? Don’t forget to take your meds. Call me immediately if you have an aura, or call the fucking hospital, or _something_. I expect to see you fucking alive in the morning. The pancakes are optional. Take your meds.”

Steve feels his eyebrows crawl up towards his hairline. “If your friend has a condition -- ”

“He’s able to manage his condition for the most part. But sometimes he forgets, you know,” James says as he puts his mobile phone away. “I help him out whenever I can.”

“You’re a good friend,” Steve says.

He watches James shrug and look out at the water, and then at his shoes. “We should be heading back soon. Seo-yeong will want someone to mind the shop.”

Impulsively, Steve steps closer. “Do you work every day?”

“Of course not,” James says, threading a path back towards the rip in the metal fencing that they’d used to get into the facility. “I get a night off a week, and the shop is closed on Mondays.”

Steve takes a deep breath. “Would you be interested in getting coffee with me some time?”

He gets a chuckle in response, deep and dark. “I just pretty much told you there’s something wrong with me and you’re asking me out on a date.”

“Not to compare,” Steve says, “but I’m sort of damaged goods, too.”

“So we’re two people with holes in their heads, maybe the metaphorical kind, maybe the literal kind,” James says, and Steve thinks he sounds slightly amused and slightly disbelieving. 

“Anything wrong with that?” Steve asks.

“I have no fucking idea.” A few more steps, and then: “You’re going to laugh when I order my coffee. I like the sweet stuff.”

Steve makes a face. “I should start laughing at you now.”

At the store, James surprises Steve by offering him a hand to shake. “Meet you here next Monday, maybe around three in the afternoon?”

“You’re on,” Steve says, and he exhales in relief, knowing that James probably sees, and doesn’t care.

He looks back several times, after James has gone back into Seo-yeong’s little shop and flipped the sign on the door back to OPEN, and he wonders why it had been so easy to talk to James. Why he’d been eager to answer questions. 

Maybe he’ll ask the others for help, and for advice. 

He wonders what Wanda and Sam and Natasha would have to say to him, if he told them about James.

///

FOUR: BUCKY

“Tell me again why you’re not eating the best pancakes I’ve ever made so far,” Wade says, and the last couple of words are drowned out by sizzling sounds as he pours more batter into the frying pan in his left hand.

“Has anyone told you today that you’re not making a fucking lick of sense,” James says as he pushes his syrup-sogged pancakes around on his plate. 

“I don’t make sense, that’s how I operate,” is Wade’s response. “Or at least it’s kept me alive so far, the occasional fit aside.”

“And that’s the part that I was afraid of,” James mutters. “Did you remember to take your medications this morning?”

“I did, I did,” Wade says, sounding weary for just a moment. “You don’t have to worry about me today.”

“I’m still going to call you later.”

“I can’t believe you’re going to interrupt your date just for me. You don’t have to,” Wade says, looking only half joking. 

James shoots him the stink-eye. “How many times do I have to tell you that it’s not a date?”

“It’s coffee! With a nice guy! And you keep staring at his pictures! How can it not be a date?”

“I don’t know anything about him,” James says, and knows he’s lying through his teeth as he says it.

“So learn,” Wade says. “Or are you just planning to spend the whole time staring at him?” 

James growls and attempts to fend off the spatula being waved in his direction. 

“You give terrible advice,” James says, eventually, and reluctantly takes another bite of pancake. “I don’t know how you even survived to be this old.”

“I’m not old,” Wade laughs, flipping a pancake onto his plate, “I’m aged, like fine wine and cheese.”

“All right, yes, you smell funny.”

“Don’t make me angry, James, or you’ll find all your clothes smothered in syrup. Then you’ll have to go to your date naked! You know, that’s a good idea, I’ll go and do that now -- ”

James suddenly has a knife in his hand -- blunt and still smeared with butter, but a knife anyway -- and he throws it. A deliberate action. He misses Wade by a mile -- the knife lands in the kitchen sink with a muffled _clang_ \-- and he smiles, innocent-like, in the direction of Wade’s wide eyes.

“That was cool,” Wade says after several moments. “Where did you learn how to do that?”

“If I tell you I might have to kill you,” James says. “I’d have to think about it. Real hard.”

He’s expecting Wade to be afraid, and he really should have known better -- because he’s suddenly having to fend off an overenthusiastic attempt at a hug. “If you have to think about it,” Wade says, “it means you don’t mean it at all! It means you love me, you really love me!”

“ _Wade_ ,” James groans, and it’s all he can do to fend off the other man. “Get off get off get off!”

“Awwwwwww,” Wade says, when he’s safely next to the stove again. “And here I thought you loved me.”

Despite himself, James is smiling at the end of the temporary scuffle. He makes himself finish off his pancakes, though he’s actually itching to get up and pace, to go back to his room and hide under his blankets -- or, failing that, hide beneath the bed. 

He can still hear William’s self-deprecating words, still feel the urge to smile at him, still feel the need to reach out for his hand.

Back in his room after Wade brushes off yet another offer to wash the dishes, James hurries through a scrub and a shave -- and when he’s standing before the cracked mirror, trying to avoid looking at the lines in his own face, he thinks of crossed wires in his memories. He knows about going on dates with no more purpose than to have a good time. He knows about going on dates to obtain information. He knows about -- 

Again that sudden wall in his memories. Running up against blank buzzing taunting nothing. It’s almost enough to make the room spin around him, threatening and drunken, and he clenches his fists. Flare of pain in the palms of his hands. He holds on to that sensation. Tries to get off the ride -- the mad spiral into anxiety and fear and the cold cold place where his waking nightmares begin.

The pain helps, a little.

He backs toward his bed and he looks around the room, at his handwriting on the walls and the things that he _does_ remember, and after a few moments he can feel himself start to breathe normally again. He can look at his hands again and see that they’re steady. 

Soft black t-shirt beneath a pinstriped button-down that he doesn’t bother to do up properly. His least-battered jeans, and the boots that he wears to work. There’s little to be done for his hair, so he just ties it back roughly and hopes for the best.

He’s within sight of Seo-yeong’s shop when he sees a shape coming towards him -- and he’s not surprised when that shape resolves into William, walking briskly along with his hands tucked into his pockets. 

“You’re early,” are the first words out of James’s mouth.

“So are you,” William says. It’s a surprise when he digs in his pocket and produces a pocket watch, plain brushed metal with a few scratches around the clasp. “Five minutes to three,” he says.

“Nice watch,” James says. “Where’d you get it from?”

“Can you believe they’ve come back into fashion? Well, sort of, this is just a reproduction of an old design, or so I was told,” William says as he puts the watch back into his pocket. “Picked it up from a place that sells books and lamps and -- other things, obviously. The store’s somewhere in Manhattan. We can go there after coffee if you like.”

“Lead on,” James says, and then he does fall in beside William -- and they’ve covered three blocks to one of the local subway stations before he’s aware of it.

James sneaks a glance at William’s profile as they pay their fares, and his thoughts spiral back to the first time they’d met, and the note in his room.

Some part of him thinks that “William” is familiar, that walking next to him is just too easy -- the same part of him that thinks the man walking next to him has another name, a real name, one that James can’t quite find in the swamps of his mind.

“You all right?” William asks just as they’re going down a flight of stairs, deeper into the station.

James blinks. Plasters on a thin shadow of a smile. “Just got a lot on my mind.”

“I’m sorry if I interrupted you,” William says, and his words are slashed into broken pieces by the sound of a train rocketing past. 

James shrugs, and stands next to him on the platform, and does his best not to shudder away when their train finally does come in, a mess of temporary breeze and teeth-rattling noise.

He sits, rigidly, clenching his hands into fists.

“Hey.”

James blinks, turns his head slightly to the side.

“You all right?” Again that sincere concern. 

James shakes his head. He has nightmares of falling from a train. Falling into ice and cold and blood-stained snow. Screaming until he has no voice left to scream with. 

“Here,” William says, and James, bemused, finds himself holding on to -- 

“ _Les Misérables_?” James squints at the e-book reader some more. “In the original French?”

“I’m rusty,” William admits. “And -- it’s interesting. It’s a distraction. You don’t have to stay here, I mean, in your mind.”

“So I’ll be an ex-convict chased by an asshole _gendarme_ instead,” James snorts, but he’s smiling, and shaking his head, and already he thinks he can make sense out of the sentences, because he’s familiar with this book, because he’s reading this book too. Already he thinks he can identify where he is in the story: instead of “prisoner number 24601” he is reading about a ship and a sailor and “prisoner number 9430”.

He’s grateful to fall into the language, back into the story, and he looks up with surprise when a smiling William taps his shoulder again and says, “Come on.”

Manhattan and its rapidfire footsteps, its restless constant movement, when they emerge from the subway station: unknown substances flowing in the gutters and cabs crawling towards traffic lights.

James finds himself taking a step closer to William. “What the hell?”

“Sorry about this,” William says as he heads towards a corner and turns left. “We’re heading someplace quieter, I promise.”

“I don’t know,” James says as he eyes a skyscraper dubiously. “Are there really quiet places in Manhattan?”

“You’d be surprised.”

A few moments later, James squints at a sign at an intersection and asks, “Are we heading towards Hell’s Kitchen?”

William actually scratches his head. “Not into the Kitchen itself. Just the outskirts.”

“This’d better be some good coffee,” James grumbles.

William heads up another block, and it’s easy to keep pace with him. Here the wind coming off the river is brisk and a little salty, and it blows random bits of paper and chalk up the streets, and James almost smiles and almost takes a picture of the left-behind remains of some kids’ game of hopscotch, the ghosts of stepped-on numbers still hanging on to the rough concrete on the sidewalk.

Voices coming up on him, one patient, one overly animated: “ -- there is literally no way on Earth you’ll be able to get away with it -- ” “ -- Karen wouldn’t, she’s too nice -- ” “She’d figure it all out in about five seconds -- ”

It isn’t just approaching footsteps, either: light rhythmic taps, a cane of some kind, and James steps off the sidewalk while William puts his back against a nearby wall, and the longer-haired of the two guys in suits throws them a half-assed salute and a “Thanks!” Red sunglasses and half an ironic smile on the other guy, who’s tapping methodically with his cane, tilting his head this way and that.

“Lawyer,” William guesses, once that conversation is out of earshot.

“Both of them,” James agrees. “One of them’s blind.”

“Lucky him, then. Text-to-speech technology everywhere.”

“The noise must be a distraction though.”

“Yeah, if you live in the wrong places.” Finally, William turns in at a door painted pale blue, a startling spot of color in the bricks and grays of their surroundings. 

James looks up when he walks through the door -- he reaches up, and taps the delicate glass wind chimes with a hesitant finger. A beautiful clear note. Shining wood floors beneath his feet, beneath his shoes, and he watches William thread a maze of sturdy-looking chairs and tables, as William steps neatly around a circle of mismatched armchairs. 

“Hello there,” says the person behind the till, when James catches up to William. “I’m Taylor. Welcome to the shop.”

“Hi Taylor,” James says. “I’m kind of in need of a sweet coffee drink -- what’s the specialty around here?”

Taylor grins. “You okay with milk in your coffee?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll make you a café bombón,” Taylor says.

“What the hell is that?” James can’t help but ask.

“You’ll find out.”

“I don’t want to know,” is all William says, and he proceeds to order: “I’ll just have the usual, thanks. Black coffee, with those fancy little sugar-shapes on the side.”

“Awww, live a little,” Taylor laughs after a moment.

“I’ve had enough of things that called themselves coffee but weren’t actually coffee, so.”

“Awww,” Taylor says again, before disappearing into the kitchen.

William picks the table in the far corner and James can’t help but feel grateful -- he sinks into the chair that’s been pushed up against the wall, and that gives him an unimpeded view of most of the coffee shop’s comfortably cramped space, as well as the door and the pair of lacy curtains hung up on either side of it.

“That’s where I normally sit,” William says as he fishes his e-book reader out of his pocket again. “I like being able to see everything.”

James blinks. “I’m sitting in your chair?”

“Yeah, you are, but you can stay there -- I’ll trust you to watch the place for me. Next time it’ll be my turn. You okay with that?”

There’s something indefinably _kind_ in the lines surrounding William’s eyes.

James nods, and sets himself to watch the place carefully -- carefully enough that he can even catch glimpses of Taylor’s comings and goings. He knows that Taylor stops behind the refrigerated display case with its cakes and pastries and sweet things to eat before bringing them their drinks -- and so he’s not surprised when Taylor’s tray contains a cup that is nearly the size and shape of a bowl, a glass that looks so much tinier in comparison, and a plate full of cookies. 

“I didn’t order food,” William says. James watches him blink and then squint briefly in Taylor’s direction.

“You say that every time,” Taylor says, tossing a wink in James’s direction. “Just enjoy the cookies.”

In the end, William smiles and shakes his head and says, “I will.”

In the meantime, James pokes at the other things on the tray. First to catch his eye: a saucer with a mini-menagerie of animals made out of white sugar and brown. He makes out the shape of a cat curled into a self-satisfied little circle, and the shape of a dog in full bark. The third shape eludes him until William picks it up with the delicate pair of silver tongs provided -- and then James has to laugh, because the third sugar-shape is in the form of a brown chicken. “Last thing I ever expected to be made out of sugar.”

“They’re part of the reason I keep coming back. I got sea animals last time,” William says as he drops the sugar-chicken into his bowl of coffee. “You haven’t lived until you’ve put a sugar shark into your coffee.”

“No, thanks,” James laughs, and goes to investigate his own drink. In sitting around, the liquids in his glass have settled into two broad bands of roughly equal height: milky-cream on the bottom and coffee-dark on top. 

He sniffs the cup suspiciously -- and then he knows his face clears into a grin as he eagerly mixes the two liquids together. The resulting mixture has a vicious espresso kick and an equally potent dose of creamy sugar. 

James immediately wants to order another tiny cupful, and he gets to his feet and grins at William. 

“Now I’m afraid to ask,” is the response, delivered with a raised eyebrow.

“Espresso and condensed milk,” James tells him, and he catches a glimpse of amused eyes, before he’s heading back towards Taylor.

“I take it you liked your café bombón,” Taylor says, grinning.

“I’d like another one please,” James says.

“Sure, just give me a minute.”

Instead of heading back to William, James watches Taylor’s brief comings and goings instead. The muted light in the room catches on silver and crystal accessories. Long hair in multiple braids, chunky leather boots, and a miniskirt over jeans. 

“Coffee,” Taylor says, and James nods and takes his little glass back to William.

“Try the cookies,” William says after a moment.

“What’s in them?” James asks, poking at the seemingly untouched food.

“They’re always different -- I come here two or three times a week and I’ve had all kinds of oatmeal cookies, chocolate-chip, and -- oh, yeah, I’ve had some with cranberries? I liked those.”

As James watches, William puts his e-book reader aside and selects a cookie, breaking it messily in half. “Let’s try this one, we can find out what’s in it together.”

James sniffs his cookie half curiously, then stuffs the whole piece into his mouth. He tastes rich, fluttery butter and the barest dusting of sugar. “Oh, that’s nice,” he says once he’s swallowed his crumbs. “So good I might buy some to take home.”

“Must be the real reason why they’re so popular,” William says, and then: “How is your friend?”

James blinks, caught off-guard. 

“The friend you called last time. You were reminding him, or her, to take medications.”

“Wade?” James asks, scratching the back of his head. 

“Yeah, yeah, that was what you called him or her.”

“Him,” James says. “I left him at home. He’s not exactly the type to go out that much. He says he’s okay with a TV and a kitchen and his books.”

William nods. “How’s he doing?”

James rolls his eyes. “I hope he’s keeping himself out of trouble, I guess. I mean, he’s good about not setting the house on fire -- ”

William’s eyes widen in alarm.

“I’m only joking,” James says. “But -- yeah, I think I understand why you’re asking. Does he get bored? Of course he does. Luckily he doesn’t do crazy things like, I don’t know, streak down the street or something. He’s just more introverted than most people. Present company included, most of the time.”

“Bringing him cookies sounds like a good idea.”

“I’ll get two packages,” James decides, “because I really don’t want to share.”

William grins. “I know, right?”

Before James can answer, the wind chimes ring sweetly, and there’s a woman in a crisp skirt suit stepping towards the counter: “Hi Taylor,” she says, smiling brightly.

“Hello, Karen,” is Taylor’s reply. 

“Cookies please,” Karen says. “Three big ones. We’ve got sort of a staff meeting going on, and Foggy says he won’t work unless someone feeds him.”

“And so you show that you are a woman of taste, by bringing him cookies from here,” Taylor says. “I knew you’d come by today, so here, I packed something up for you. Best of the batch I made this morning.”

“You’re absolutely amazing, Taylor,” Karen says, and James watches her almost skip out of the shop.

“That good, huh,” he says, contemplating his coffee. “I could almost believe it.”

“It’s a little out of the way,” William says, “but you can see why I’m willing to make the trip.”

“Maybe you should bring your friends here,” James suggests, breaking another cookie in half. This one leaves a rich coating of cinnamon on his tongue. 

“I wish I could, actually, my quiet friend would probably like those armchairs,” and William smiles and looks wistful. “Too bad they’re something like halfway across the country.”

James blinks. “The way you talked about them, I was under the impression you saw them often.”

“I did, until the thing with the missing memories came up. Eventually they called in a doctor for me, and the doctor advised me to move back here.”

“And here you are, right on the edge of Hell’s Kitchen. Did you grow up here?”

“What? No, I’m from Brooklyn. Grew up watching people play chess on their front doorsteps. Kids making all kinds of unholy rackets.”

Despite himself James has to smile. Though his memories are a tattered patchwork, he _can_ remember the voices and the laughter of children, and the grit of chalk dust on his hands, the echoes of construction and the bits of paper and other things whirling in crazy little dust devils down the streets. He can remember those things, and hold on to them, instead of far darker memories, instead of the smell of gunpowder and scorched pavement. “I think I know what you mean.”

“You from around here?”

“I remember I spent a few years in Brooklyn.”

William laughs. “I wonder if we were ever neighbors.”

James bites his lip around his instinctive response: _You look like someone I knew from back then._

///

Over the godawful racket of the subway speeding its way back into Brooklyn: “You want to meet up again?”

James blinks, looks up from William’s e-book reader, raises an eyebrow. “Sure.”

“We could run in Prospect Park or something, next time.”

“No thanks,” James says, shaking his head and grinning. “Never been much for that kind of exercise.”

“We’ll sit in the sun or something, then. And you can bring your friend with you if he’s up for it.”

“Big fat if,” James says, and he doesn’t mean to sound fond, but he knows he does. “And sitting in the sunshine’s more my speed.”

“Great,” William says. “Give me your phone for a moment.”

James hands it over, and when he touches William’s fingertips something _warm_ seems to pass into him, a brief sensation of welcome brightness, and he has to fight off the urge to lean towards William -- to soak up more of that warmth.

“Come in for a bite,” James invites, when they’re back to standing outside Seo-yeong’s shop.

“Maybe next time,” William says, with a small smile. “I’ve got to talk to my friends and tell them about you, sort of reassure them I haven’t been abducted and killed or something.”

“Is that what you’re into?” James asks, trying to keep it light and friendly, trying to make a joke. “We can do something like that next time, then.”

Thankfully, William laughs, and then -- he holds out his hand. “I had a good time, going out for coffee with you.”

“Pleasure’s all mine,” James says, and they shake hands and there, there’s that warmth again, and he pretends he isn’t reluctant to let go.

Just as William has turned away and started walking up the street, James takes a step forward, and calls his name: “Hey, William.”

“Yeah?”

“Hey, if you -- ” James tries very hard not to fumble his words. “If you ever need someone to talk to -- ” He looks down at his feet, looks at Seo-yeong’s closed door, everywhere but at William. “I’ve been told I’m a good listener.”

Again that warmth, when William nods once and says, “Thanks. I’ll take you up on it.”

James can’t make himself turn away when William starts walking towards the Brooklyn Bridge.

He wonders how far away William actually lives.

He could follow -- he’s been taught that -- but he stays rooted to the spot, until William’s out of sight and the moment has passed.

///

“So, how did things go?” Wade, leaning next to the stove, doesn’t look up from his book. The cardboard covers are cracking and half its pages are either creased or on the edge of falling out completely. “You -- you didn’t fuck up or anything, did you? You were scared about fucking up. I hope you didn’t. I really hope you didn’t.”

James sighs, and runs his hand through his hair, and goes to the fridge for a glass of water. “I didn’t fuck up. Nobody did. It was just -- it took a lot out of me, okay. Wasn’t expecting a walk nearly into Hell’s Kitchen. And also I might have told him that I was willing to listen to him if he had anything on his mind. Kinda stupid really.” He thumps himself down into the nearest chair. “He told me he had friends who cared about him.”

“So why can’t you be one of those friends?”

James shrugs. Drains his glass. Looks away from Wade’s sympathetic expression.

“You want something alcoholic?” 

“I can’t get drunk, there’s no point,” James says, and then: “I’m going to bed.”

“I’ll leave dinner in the fridge,” Wade says. “I’m thinking about making pasta. Something with vegetables.”

“Be careful,” James says. “And knock on my door if you have an aura.”

“You sure?”

James looks back. “Yes, I’m sure -- wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it.”

That suddenly makes Wade smile. “You know, James, if you told a guy you wanted to be his friend -- I think he’d believe you. I think he’ll call. Sooner or later. He will.”

James shrugs, and heads upstairs. He sets his mobile phone aside, and turns around, staring. Here are the walls. The things he remembers, the things he’s said to have done, the things that have been hidden from him -- and on the other wall, the pictures of the man who looks so much like William.

He shivers as he washes up and he shivers as he puts on some warm clothes. It’s as if, having experienced the warmth that William seemed to give off, his body’s decided that he’s going to be cold without it -- and so James finds himself climbing into bed and huddling under his blankets.

He stares at the ceiling when he can’t bear to stare at the walls.

Chime of a text message, and he looks at his mobile phone in its cradle on the night stand. Who could be wanting to talk to him now? He hopes it’s not Seo-yeong -- he hopes she’s all right.

_Thanks for coming out with me today. Hope the coffee was good. - William_

It takes him a moment to come up with a reply: _I’ll definitely go back for the coffee thing I had. And the cookies._ A pause, a long one. Finally, he adds, _Good night,_ and then he sends the message.

The answer comes back within a minute. _Good night._

He might still be shivering when he closes his eyes, when he tries to go to sleep -- but he appreciates the kind words. He’s grateful. He thinks maybe he’s learned that again. 

///

“Pay day today,” Seo-yeong says again, and James nods and pockets the small brown envelope that she passes over the counter, and he goes back to his mopping. Soothing, repetitive movements as he pushes the mop in his hands from side to side, brushing dirt from the bottoms of the shelves. A stack of clean dishes on one of the cramped tables in the back, and the cold storage shelves humming quietly to themselves, to be left alone for the night with the ice cream bars in their colorful wrappers, the abundance of restocked greens and herbs, and a bright profusion of fruits.

“Thank you,” the old lady says as James puts the mop and bucket back in their places. “I will do the rest of the cleaning and picking up. You may go home.”

And James steps out the front door, waving as he watches her flip the sign to CLOSED and turn off the outside lights.

He’s left in a washed-out puddle of faint white light from the lamps across the street. A brief stir of a breeze that gently pushes fallen leaves along the nearest gutter. A pale sliver of crescent moon, a fuzzy outline in a cloud-streaked night.

A block away from the grocery, and something in his light jacket starts vibrating -- a startling, insistent buzz -- and he stops under another streetlamp and squints at the name on the display.

He’s expecting Wade -- he’s already tense, he’s already preparing himself to start running back -- but it isn’t Wade calling.

It’s _William_.

James wheels around so he can look at where the Brooklyn Bridge must be -- his view is obscured by trees and rooftops and the clouds in the night -- and he makes himself take a deep breath, and then one more, before hitting _Answer_. The words “You okay?” trip off his tongue before he can think.

“Hi,” and the voice that answers him doesn’t sound warm. Doesn’t sound _good_ at all. “Sorry if I surprised you.” Awkward pause, and then, “It’s me, it’s S-William.”

“Yeah, William, I know, I mean I know it’s you,” James says, and he leans against the lamp post for support. “How’s things?”

A quiet sigh. “Not so good. My head hurts.”

“Tea and painkillers,” James recommends. Why is his heart still hammering?

“I _think_ I’ve got some tea around here somewhere. As for the painkillers, well, those don’t often work on me.”

“Sucks. I sympathize. I have the same problems.”

“We’re two peas in a pod, you and me,” William says around a quiet, strangled groan and a loud creak. “Okay. I moved from the couch to my bed. My head still hurts.” A pause. “I tried calling my friends for advice but none of them are picking up their phones.”

“That’s not so kind of them,” James says.

“No, no, you don’t understand, I think they’ve got something that they need to do, I think they’re busy, so that’s why I can’t get ahold of them.” Another groan. “Called you instead. You said.”

“I said you could call me, yeah. Here I am. Do you need anything?”

“Did I tell you about my place?” is what he gets instead of an answer. “There’re streetlights right outside my window, and normally I don’t mind them, but I know I’ll feel better in the dark and that’s not gonna happen.”

James exhales, quietly. “Yeah, well, I have no idea how to help you. Hide under your bed maybe?”

“Don’t think I’ll fit.” A pause. “Closet?”

“Bathtub?”

“I don’t have one of those.”

“Try the closet, then -- I hope you’ll fit in there.” James shifts from foot to foot. “What brought the headache on, do you know?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m remembering things. Hold on a minute -- ”

James listens with bated breath to a series of shuffles and creaks and thuds.

“I might fit inside the closet,” William says after a moment. His voice is a little louder now. “Barely. Got a pillow in here, and a couple of extra blankets.”

“Dark?” James asks. He thinks, briefly, of his own quarters -- he’s in the back of the house and the only way in or out is via the door. No windows, except in the tiny attached bathroom, and that particular window opens inches away from a blank concrete wall. It’s why he took the room in the first place -- he’s safe in there, he’s enclosed, and the only person with keys to all the locks is himself.

“Very.”

“How’s the headache?”

“Still there.” A quiet rustle. “Tea. You told me to make some. But I don’t want to move.”

James makes himself smile. “Strangely comfortable in there, huh?”

“Yeah. How’d you know it’d work?”

“The thing about the darkness?” James shrugs, though there’s no one there to see him. “It helps me. When I don’t feel well, or when I just want to shut the world out for a few hours. I don’t live in a closet though. Room’s a little bigger than that.”

“Room of your own, huh,” William says. “Sounds good.”

“Sounds like freedom, yeah,” James says. “Tell me about things. What’s going through your head right now. Shit like that.”

The muffled chuckle is immediately followed by an equally muffled groan. “Ow,” William says. “I was laughing because my closet is a strangely comfortable place to sleep in, but then there’s my damned headache to consider. I mean, sure, I like having enough space but this is not as bad as I thought it would be.”

“Don’t go doing it regularly,” James says. “Bad for the joints. Your back.”

“I might feel this in the morning, yeah.”

“What else?”

“Mmm,” William says. “I think I’m starting to feel a little better. A little. I still wish I could use painkillers, but -- but maybe I can try to sleep.”

“That’s really good news,” James says.

“Thanks to you,” is the reply, but the last word is nearly smothered in a yawn. “Thanks for suggesting I find a dark place to stay in.”

“I hoped it’d work for you, since it does for me.”

“I really hope this headache doesn’t come back -- but in case it does I’ll remember to make the tea before I get in here,” William says.

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Thanks,” William says again. “And now I’ll go to sleep and let you get on with your life.”

“I was just on the way home from Seo-yeong’s,” James says, and only now can he feel like he can move again. His shadow fades and grows again as he moves.

“How is she?” William yawns again, and this time James has to fight against the urge to yawn back. 

“She’s Seo-yeong,” James says, and laughs softly. “Kind of think she’ll still be here when the rest of us are old and dead and gone.”

“She does give off that impression.”

When James gets to his doorstep, he glances at the shrouded moon and says, “Get some rest, William,” and for a moment he knows, he just _knows_ , that he’s said those words before. Not to William, no, but to someone else. He can taste familiarity in the syllables. 

“I will,” is the reply, snapping James back to the here and now. “Thanks again.”

“Any time,” he says, and he waits for the click that means William’s disconnected from the call.

Scrape of his key in the lock. The sounds of light snoring drifting faintly from upstairs: that means that Wade’s called it a night, and James can tiptoe into his bedroom without having to talk to anyone.

He turns out the lights and sits on his bed in the dark, and hopes that William feels better, and that Wade sleeps through the night.

///

The next night, William calls to say that he’s doing better.

The night after that, James gets a partly garbled text message: _headache bck and nt ok with loud noises sorry._

“You look worried,” Seo-yeong says. Rattle and chime of coins as she sorts them from the cash register into little bags. 

James wonders what he looks like, because her expression clouds over as soon as he looks up from his phone. “It’s William,” he says. “I’m worried about him.”

“He hasn’t been back,” she says.

“That too,” he says.

“Go to him. See if he is okay.”

“Brooklyn’s such a big place, I wouldn’t even know where to start looking.”

“You still have a phone.”

James sighs, and starts dialing, and says in an undertone, “I just hope he’s okay enough to even answer.”

One ring becomes two, three, four.

“Hello.” A croak on the line. 

James winces. “William. It’s me.”

“James,” William says in a near-broken whisper. “Hi.”

“You’re not okay.”

“Thought I was getting better. Now I can’t sleep, even if I’m squeezed into the closet. Everything hurts.”

There’s a tug on James’s sleeve, then, and he startles and whirls and -- there’s Seo-yeong, holding a shopping bag up to him. “What?” he asks both the phone and the old lady.

“Everything hurts,” William says again.

“Take these to him,” Seo-yeong says.

James nods to her, and accepts the bag, and asks, “William? Where are you exactly? Can you give me your location?” He drops his voice a little. “Don’t make me go searching Brooklyn for you, I’ll do it block by block if I must.”

“You don’t have to.”

“William, please.”

Silence, that is quickly broken by a jagged-edged sigh. “All right,” William says. “I’m in Red Hook.” A chime almost immediately after. James checks the text message: the address is garbled and not so very far away, all things considered. 

“I’ll be right there. And Seo-yeong’s sent you some things,” James says.

William grumbles, words that James can’t make out.

He contents himself with saying, “I’m on my way, okay, try to stay alive until then.”

“Not in a war zone here.”

“Thank goodness for small mercies,” James says, and hangs up.

“Go,” Seo-yeong says.

“Thank you,” James says, and he bolts out into the night. His teeth rattle with every step. Apprehension and worry in his grip on Seo-yeong’s bag.

Soon he finds a dark window in a bank of lit ones: curtains and blinds and a single black space, and he’s in the right part of Red Hook and he pulls out his phone again, and dials. “William. I’m here.”

“Come on up,” is William’s reply, the brief sound of him dashed onto shattered rocks.

For extra silence, James toes his shoes off once he’s sure he’s standing in front of the right door. He uses the light of his mobile phone to guide his steps. The bedroom is easy to find, as is the closet -- easy to spot the material spilling out of the closet doors. Easy to hear the labored breaths.

He stops within a foot of the closet and says, quietly, “William.”

“James,” is the reply, and then there’s a hand emerging from the depths of the closet. 

James takes William’s hand. The warmth is all wrong, burning feverish, as though William were a guttering lamp, burning himself out. 

“I’m cold and I’m hot and I’m cold all over again,” William whispers, “and I know I need to eat and drink and I don’t have an appetite, or the strength to do something.” Pause. The rustle of blankets. “I remember being like this, a long time ago, when I was still young and very thin -- I used to get sick a lot, like spending entire months in bed. Sick like really bad sick. Do you pray, James?”

James shivers and is thankful that William can’t see it. “I don’t know how to,” he says. It’s a lie, of course. He has fragmented memories of rosary beads. Flickering candlelight illuminating a lavishly decorated iconostasis. Blood drying on a crucifix.

“I didn’t, for a long time.” William’s voice sounds so very hollow. “But I’ve been praying all night long. I just want my memories back. I want everything to be okay. I want to get the fuck up. I want to see my friends.”

“I’m here,” James says. “Here to help. Me and Seo-yeong. She sent you, uh,” and here he directs the faint light coming from his mobile phone’s screen towards the contents of the plastic bag. “Instant noodles. I think some of this isn’t spicy. You want soup?”

“Spicy’s good,” William says.

“I need to turn the lights on so I can find whatever you use around here to cook,” James says. “So close that damned door. Back in ten minutes.”

“James.”

“William,” he says, looking back at the closet. 

“Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me yet. I gotta figure your food out first.”

Instructions are easy to follow. He blocks the memories that rise up like bile in his throat, of being told to kill and abduct and torture -- no, not those, they have absolutely no place in the here and now. He doesn’t need them. He needs to turn on the lights and then find or make some hot water.

He finds his way to a light switch and now he can see a little more. A sink, tiles, plates stacked neatly. He remembers to wash his hands before trying to figure out the taps -- he tests the water temperatures with his left hand, the hand that can’t be scalded, the hand that can withstand boiling water. 

Instructions in Hangul. It takes him a moment to decipher them. A red label. A plastic bowl filled with dried noodles and seasoning sachets. It’s child’s play to put all the parts together, to fill the bowl with hot water. The five minutes of waiting is another story. 

Five minutes to worry, five minutes spent staring at the closet, five minutes wishing he could make everything better. Five minutes. He hears the hissing uncomfortable breaths from the closet. 

William says he’s been through this -- and James’s heart, or what he’s got of it, aches in response. In sympathy. 

Racking coughs, a mercifully brief bout. James grits his teeth and turns his attention back to the steaming bowl of noodles. He casts around in the cabinets and -- there, there, that’s what he needs, a bigger bowl to carry the flimsy-looking bowl in. A spoon and a fork. He carries everything to the closet, trembling hands -- flesh and metal alike. “William.”

“I can smell the noodles,” is William’s reply.

“Can you try to eat them?” James asks, anxiously.

“Yeah. Yeah. I can try.”

The closet door creaks open, slowly -- and James steps back, not just to give William space. His freed hand comes up to cover his mouth.

William looks _terrible_. Faded and fraying around the edges, as though the image of him were beginning to come undone. Lank hair. The corners of his eyes are pinched. He moves too carefully, too slowly, and he winces with every sip of soup, with every mouthful of noodles.

The soup smells like bright heat, tongue-stinging. James had been tempted to put in just half of the seasonings, and then relented, dumping the whole packet’s worth in -- and now he thinks he’s done the right thing. William eats, slowly, but steadily -- James winces for him and for himself, because he can’t actually bear the thought of drinking that red-hued liquid.

On to the noodles, a little awkward to manage with William’s hand trembling around the pair of disposable chopsticks -- James checks Seo-yeong’s package and digs out the extra sets, ready to offer them should William have an accident. 

William finishes three-quarters of the bowl before pushing it away. “If I eat any more I might puke it all back up.”

“Right, right,” James says, hurriedly taking the food away and putting it to the side. He’ll have to be careful not to step in the soup. 

William looks a little less wan around the eyes. “Thanks.”

“Feel better?”

“Maybe the good thing about feeling as shitty as I do is that I have no idea how spicy that thing really was. I mean. Red soup.”

“Smells even spicier than army base stew,” James supplies.

“Didn’t taste it. Lucky me.”

James helps William settle back into the closet, and wonders that William never flinches away -- in fact, William ends up leaning on him, once he’s wrapped up in his blankets once again.

“Wanna tell me how this all got started?” James murmurs, watching the unsteady flutter of William’s eyelids. His eyes are more than used to the dark now.

Silence for a few moments, and several deep breaths, and he thinks William’s fallen back asleep, and won’t be answering.

And then: “Maybe my memories are coming back.”

James blinks. “Walk me through that?”

“Yeah. Started with -- with the Internet.” He watches William motion somewhere in the direction of the other room. “I got a tablet and I started searching for myself. Really stupid, huh? I think it’s called an ego search or something. Vanity search. Whatever. I put my name into a search engine. You wouldn’t believe the number of results that came up.”

“Millions,” James guesses, trying to make a joke.

“Yeah, yeah, millions, something like that.” 

James blinks. “Whoa. Wow.” And: “Who _are_ you, really?”

“Can’t -- can’t really say. Missing some of my memories like this, I have no idea,” and then William wheezes out another series of coughs, and James rubs circles into that broad back. “Thanks. You’re actually good at this.”

James hums instead of answering, and then: “What did you find? On the Internet, I mean. I’m still a little confused at you finding all those things about yourself out there. Isn’t that a little creepy?”

“Not today it wasn’t,” William says. “I remember mud and slush and snow and the _stink_. War. Smells like a nightmare and a half, you know?”

“Yes,” James says, sighing. “I know exactly what you mean.”

“That neverending stink that you could never properly wash off. And when you were lucky you had people watching your six.”

“When you were lucky, yeah,” and all the static in James’s mind reforms into solo missions, nothing but him and his target or targets, no possibility of backup. Leering faces that concealed wariness, the stench of disgust that meant going into the dark, into the ice. “Tell me about your backup.”

“They were good men,” William says. “And there was one good woman. God, she was _beyond_ good. She’d say _Jump!_ and not a one of us would ask questions. We’d do it. We’d do what she wanted. I thought she was something else, you know?” 

“I’d like to meet her.”

“And I’d love to see her again. But -- well. Look at me, stuck here.” When William coughs again he doesn’t sound as congested as he did earlier. “I miss my guys. Except the Internet tells me that when I try to remember them, I’m missing a name.”

This time William’s words are interrupted by a loud sneeze. The sharp tang of copper and rust, and dark spots on the blanket between William’s hands.

To James it’s like being plunged into numbness and poison. 

“Shit,” James says, and lunges for Seo-yeong’s package. He paws through the food items, all the way down to the bottom -- and he finds a package of baby wipes. It’ll have to do. He pulls out a wad at once and thrusts it at William’s face. “Head forward, hold that to your nose,” he says. “If you get any blood in your mouth spit it out.”

He watches William pinch the bridge of his nose, and nods, and then: “Ice,” he says. He pulls away and finds the refrigerator by its quiet, insistent hum. There’s a cold pack in there. He hurries back to William and folds the cold pack over, applies its misted edge to William’s nose.

“This happen to you often?” James asks.

“When I was younger,” William manages to say around the pinching and the baby wipes and the cold pack. “You know a lot about taking care of people.”

“I’ve been around.”

“I can believe it. Can I ask you a very personal question? If you don’t like it you can deck me.”

“I don’t deck people who have nosebleeds,” James says. “Ask your question.”

“Where did you get your left arm?”

James flinches.

“Sorry, sorry, forget it,” William says.

“How long have you been waiting to ask?”

“Since I met you,” William admits. “I just didn’t know how to go about it. Rude question, I know, I know, forget I asked.”

“I -- I don’t mind answering. Not if it’s you asking.” James sighs. “I was sort of looking for an opportunity to tell you, too.”

William looks up at him, wide-eyed -- and James looks away from him. He can’t bear those kind eyes. 

“Lost my arm when I fell off a, a train,” James grates out. “Long time ago. People came and picked me up, and put me back together. Been wearing it ever since.” He glosses over the ways in which he’s used his arm and his fist. He glosses over the scratched-off red paint, high up on his arm. He glosses over the difficulty of cleaning blood and fragments of bone from the segments making up his fingertips.

“Sorry, sorry,” William says.

“You wanted to know. I wanted to tell you. That’s that.”

“Bad memories.” 

James shrugs, tries to hide his expression in the dark of the room. “It’ll pass.”

“I’ll make it up to you.”

“When you’re feeling better.”

William nods. And: “I told you I was missing a name.” He puts the wad of blood-streaked wipes down, and takes the cold pack, and keeps holding it to his face. “Someone who was in the war with me.”

James blinks. “Yeah. You said. Did the Internet help you find that guy’s name?”

“Ever heard of a guy named _James Buchanan Barnes_?” He watches William blink. “Huh. You have the same first name.”

James bites at the inside of his cheek, and takes a deep breath, and lies. “No. Name’s not ringing any bells.”

“This is gonna seem rude, but -- ”

“Spit it out,” James says, grateful for the darkness that hides the trembling in his hands. 

“You look a little like him.”

“Okay.” James forces the next question out. “So he had your back, during your war?”

“Yeah. Him and the others. I lost him, though, apparently.”

“Apparently?” James blinks, and then: “He’s part of your lost memories.”

“He’s the _main_ thing -- person -- I’m missing,” William says. “Ow. Um.” He coughs and coughs, adds a few more spots to his wad of baby wipes. James snatches that handful from him and gives him a fresh one. “Thanks.”

“Tell me about him.”

He’s not expecting a sigh, or a quiet voice. “I’ve been digging through -- things, you know? Books people have written, histories, and they had some pretty consistent stories. I grew up with James Buchanan Barnes. I risked getting kicked out of the army to save his life. I fought the bad guys with him and he saved my life, saved my team’s lives, over and over again. There are photographs. There are diagrams. And it’s so frustrating, because. All this information and it’s all missing from my head.”

“How?” James asks. Pieces of a puzzle. Reconciling the James Buchanan Barnes in William’s books and histories with the James Buchanan Barnes on the walls of his bedroom. 

Long pause from William, and then: “You’re never going to believe me.”

“I’ve seen aliens attempt to eat my city, I can try to believe what you’re going to tell me. Besides, what reason would you have to lie to me?” He’s pleading, and can’t let William know that he’s pleading. He’s still missing so many pieces. He’s still somewhere between James and -- whoever it was who’d worn that unwanted red star. All those names, none of them his. The Asset. The Soldier. HYDRA’s Fist. Зимний Солдат.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right,” William says, and then he sneezes. Bright red on his hands. “I don’t think the cold pack is working.”

“That, or you can’t actually stay in this closet,” James says. “You have an actual bed somewhere in this place?”

“Yeah.”

“Come on,” and James braces himself, takes the full weight of William across both shoulders, gets to his feet. William is heavy, but he’s no burden, and James has carried greater loads. 

A few steps to the right and then he can dump William onto the nearby bed, and William groans and settles against the pillows, still sitting up, still holding the baby wipes up to his nose. 

James tries to smile, tries to be reassuring, but there are more imperative needs, and he returns to the refrigerator in search of actual ice and a dish towel. “Use this,” he says, when he sits down next to William again.

“I’m glad you’re here,” William says, and then he hisses when he puts the ice-filled cloth to his face. “But this thing’s fucking cold.”

“Wouldn’t be ice if it weren’t cold.”

“I’ve been frozen before,” William says. “It was -- I should say I didn’t have a choice. But it was my hands on the sticks, it was my decision to crash. I just didn’t realize I’d be in the ice for such a long time.”

James shivers.

“Let me guess: _been there, done that,_ ” William says.

“Over and over again,” James says, before he can stop himself.

“That’s rough, rougher than what happened to me. Was it done to you? Were you forced into it?”

“Yeah.”

“Hope you made the bastards pay.”

“Doing my best.”

William closes his eyes, and James takes that moment to -- look away? Avoid meeting his eyes? He’s so close, he could give it all away, he could tell this man his name and the deeds he remembers and then what? The soup that he empties into the sink, congealed with bits of rehydrated vegetable, is red, and he thinks of blood on his hands and he nearly has to throw up.

James fights for his next breath, and his next. The strain of gritted teeth. If only he had the words to tell William his story. If only he had the guts. 

Because he _is_ that man that William is talking about. He is James Buchanan Barnes. He doesn’t have the memories of the time before the train, the time before the arm -- he hasn’t recovered all of them. He’s missing the taste of wartime candy and the stink of fear at Azzano; he’s missing every dance step he’d ever known and every cigarette he’d ever bought, stolen, or traded.

He doesn’t always remember all the names of the men he’d been imprisoned with, and he doesn’t _want_ to remember the names of the men and women he’s killed, and now here he is with a man whose name he has suspicions about -- 

A shuffling step. Hesitant. James looks over his shoulder. William is there, still wrapped in one blanket and still carrying his ice pack. 

“You sure you’re supposed to be standing up?” James asks.

“Was wondering what had happened to you,” William says. 

James blinks, looks down, looks away. “Just thinking.”

“Share with the rest of the class?”

“You first.” How James manages to remember the previous conversation at all is a miracle, given the whirl of his thoughts. “You were going to tell me about -- about things. You were going to tell me about that guy, and you were going to tell me how you lost your memories.” 

“Oh, yeah, you’re right. Where do I even start?” William says.

///

FIVE: STEVE

He can taste blood when he swallows, and his toes curl involuntarily when he walks back through the kitchen and towards his tiny bedroom, and Steve knows that the man who’s come to help him tonight is in bad shape. 

“Sit down, shoes off, come on,” Steve says, and he doesn’t mean to sound like his old drill sergeants. But they’d taught him a lesson that’s come in handy every now and then: when in doubt, simple commands are best -- and he’s seeing the results now, as James sits on the foot of the bed, as James takes his boots off. He offers James a blanket and watches those hands -- the flesh and the metal -- flex around the softly pilling material, as though he were holding on to a lifeline.

He reaches for the lamp next to the bed, and the shadows of the room bend away from soft golden light. 

James suddenly shakes all over and looks at him, and says, “If you don’t want to talk, or you can’t -- I can go. We can do this thing another time.”

“Trying to get comfortable, here, actually, so I can talk to you,” Steve tells him. “And yeah. Right back at you. If you’d rather we didn’t do this, then we’re not doing this. The story can wait for another time. When we’ve put ourselves back together, or something.”

“No, no, don’t,” and James has his head bowed but he’s also holding his hand out, and Steve has no idea what to do with himself: should he take that hand or should he leave James alone?

He settles for saying, “Okay.” He settles for continuing to ice his nose and his cheeks. He thought he’d left the nosebleeds far behind. Here he is again with an ice pack, sitting with someone else who knows how to handle such a situation. Ice and baby wipes. 

“My friends and I, we do this thing,” Steve begins, when he looks at James and James gives him a terse little nod. “We help people. And we protect people from threats.”

“You’re not SHIELD, are you?”

“SHIELD’s gone,” Steve says. “We’re -- we’re maybe a little like them and maybe not. At least we’re sure that this time we’re not the bad guys.”

“How do you know?” James asks.

Steve smiles through the ice. Thinks of his friends. “I just do.”

He gets a shrug in response, and continues: “So sometimes we’re sent out to investigate things that could become threats, and take action if we must -- and during one of those investigations I got hit by a kid who made me forget -- well, you know that part.”

“Magic,” James says, and nods. “Go on.”

Steve blinks. “You’re not surprised it was magic.”

Another shrug. “Like I said. Battle of New York. Magic’s not that hard to accept once you’ve accepted fucking huge wormholes from some nightmare outer dimension.”

Steve shrugs. “True.”

“So you got hit by magic,” James says, slow and careful and considering, “and the cure is or was -- here in Brooklyn or something.”

“I was supposed to be trying to relive my childhood, or looking for clues, but.” Steve shrugs. He’s come this far and might as well continue telling the truth, or the part of it others can be comfortable with. “I was a kid a long, long time ago. It’s hard to find words for how much the world has changed since then. I feel like a relic, sometimes.”

“A relic who goes all the way to Hell’s Kitchen because that’s where a decent cup of coffee happens to be.”

Steve smiles, or tries to, around everything on his face. 

“Also, you make it sound like you’re pretty damn old, and I’m calling bullshit on that, because I’ve seen my own face in the mirror and I look _older_ than you.” He watches the corner of James’s mouth quirk up in the briefest of smiles. 

“I don’t look it, but I’m not exactly a spring chicken,” Steve says.

“And now you think you might be remembering something.”

Steve blinks. That _is_ where all of this started, after all. “Yeah. Something like that.”

“You wanna tell me about it?”

Steve eyes James for a moment. “I would, except that you look like you might fall over at any second.”

“I guess I’m crashing a little. Worried for you.”

“Thanks, but -- are you sure it’s just that?”

This time, when James looks up, he looks hunted and haunted and hurt. “Not sure. Hard to say. Can’t tell you.”

Steve blinks. Feels, unaccountably out of nowhere, like he’s been sucker-punched. He has to try to fight the disappointment off. “If you’re sure.”

Again a glimpse of those shuttered eyes. 

The silence between them stretches, and Steve sighs and pats at his thoroughly chilled nose, and puts the mostly-melted ice pack away, when:

“Sorry,” James whispers. “Maybe I can tell you. Maybe I should. But not today. I -- I’m not ready. I don’t have the words.”

Steve has to take it. “Okay. When you can.”

Another silence, shorter this time. “Tell me about the things you’re remembering.”

Steve has to think about it. Has to cherry-pick his words. “Heckling the Yankees when I was younger, mostly. Someone opening a fire hydrant on the street corner in the middle of summer. Looking in the windows of stores and imagining what I’d do with a hundred dollars.”

The list gets him a chuckle. “What kinds of stores did you want to buy things from? Candy stores? Those places with all those flavors of ice cream?”

“Used to be we didn’t have much in terms of ice cream flavors,” Steve says with an answering smile. “Now there’s a flavor for each day of the year.”

“I had a blue cheese ice cream cone once,” James says. “With bits of honeycomb.”

Steve makes a face.

“It was good,” James says. “Not that I’d line up for it again, but -- it wasn’t something you spat out, you know?”

“No, thanks.” Steve shakes his head. “I’d rather have chocolate-chip cookie dough. With extra chocolate sprinkles on top.”

“That’s the sort of thing that’ll give you a heart attack.”

“I don’t care,” Steve says, laughing softly. 

And then he sobers. How does he tell James about living in a time when rationing was a reality? When medicines, even those that were ostensibly for run-of-the-mill ailments like the yearly flu, were far too expensive? 

How does he tell James that he can’t remember much about playing games in the streets because he’d spent far too much time sick in bed?

Sharp-edged memories, stinging at his eyes, and he puts his head down, tries to will the tears away. The scent of his mother’s favorite talcum powder, and the quick whipping movements of her needle and thread as she mended their clothes. The feeling of sitting next to one of the quickest and smartest boys in the class, the boy who had such lovely handwriting. Skating stones into the Hudson River. The scents of cedar and graphite on his fingertips.

He thinks about that last, and finally answers the question from earlier. “I liked to hang around the candy shop, sure, we all did -- but then I’d leave the others and go a couple of doors down. There was this place that sold art materials. Brushes and oil paints and watercolor sets, and canvases everywhere. Some of them were even bigger than I used to be. The kind you’d see fine portraits painted on.”

“You’re an artist.”

“I work in pencil, when I can. And that store had such a wide range of pencils -- grease pencils for the workers when they needed to work on wood or brick or glass. They had charcoals, and colored pencils, and watercolor pencils. Someone gave me a set of really beautiful solid graphite pencils, once, and I remember being really careful with those -- had to make them last.”

“But you also really wanted to use them.” There’s something crooked, now, about the lines of James’s smile.

“I did. I filled up every sketchbook I could find. I drew everything I could see, and a lot of things that I could only imagine.” Steve laughs, now, remembering the afternoons and evenings of listening to the radio so he could imagine the faces of the characters in his favorite programs. 

“Do you still draw?”

Steve looks away, and sighs. “Not really. I’ve been -- apparently I’ve been busy, even before coming here to try and get my memories back.”

“Shame,” James says.

“I don’t know if I’ll have the time to draw again soon.” Steve thinks, and adds, “I don’t think that store is there any more, anyway.”

“You can order pretty much anything from the Internet. Every kind of pencil you could think of.”

“I know.”

James yawns, then.

Steve starts and looks around until his eyes fall on the clock next to the bed. “Oh, shit,” he says: it’s past midnight, and James looks worn out, the same James who’s already admitted to adrenaline crash. “Oh, _shit_ , I’m so sorry,” Steve says. “Kept you up all this time.”

James’s answer is preceded by a second yawn. “It’s all right. You needed help. I was willing to help.”

“And now you’re exhausted.”

“Nothing a nap won’t cure.” He watches as James gets up and feels around for his boots. “Should get going. You need to sleep. Need all your energy, in case the memories don’t stop coming back.”

“You need to sleep too,” Steve says.

“Yeah, I’ll go straight to bed when I get home.”

“How about I save you the trip,” Steve says. “Got a couch. You can sack out on it for a couple of hours.”

James shakes his head. “Don’t wanna be a nuisance.”

“I’m telling you,” Steve murmurs, “you are absolutely the farthest thing in the world from a nuisance.”

“You haven’t seen me without coffee and breakfast.”

Steve laughs, and is almost caught up short. A memory, stirring, so tantalizingly close: the impression of someone waking up with a feral growl, and feet reluctantly hitting the floor. It pulls at him, makes him grit his teeth: a name, a face, some kind of identifier -- he can’t find it. The memory slips away and he reluctantly lets it go. 

He lets the argument go, too. “James.”

“Yeah,” is the hushed reply. Unexpectedly close, like a little over arm’s-length close, and Steve blinks and looks to the side because what is James doing, curling up right on the floor, in the bare square of space boxed in by Steve’s bed and the closet he’d been hiding in?

“There’s a couch, I said,” Steve begins.

“Floor’s fine.” The words are muffled. James’s back turned to him. “Feels safe here.”

The next sound is a profoundly quiet breath, the step over the edge into sudden sleep, and Steve blinks. He can’t help but stare at the shape on his floor. The curve of James, sleeping, the rhythm of his breath slowing.

Steve tries to parse those last few words. James feels safe on the floor. James is asleep. 

Still staring at James’s back, Steve re-wraps his blankets and settles onto the pillows, and -- when sleep grabs at him, gentle and insistent -- he resists for just a moment before closing his eyes.

///

Shuffling footsteps.

Steve wakes up from dreams of fighting and dreams of never being able to turn around and thank the man watching his back -- to the rustle of a newspaper. Sunlight creeping in around the edges of his curtains and the unmistakable presence of breakfast: coffee, and sweet things, and the waft of something hotly spicy. The click of chopsticks.

He wriggles out of his curls of blanket and comforter and sheet and he’s thoroughly aware of the creases on his cheeks as he stumbles into the kitchen and says, “Morning.”

Dark shadows cupping James’s eyes -- but then he takes another long sip of the coffee in his paper cup and hums, and Steve thinks he might almost look content with the world. Even the patch of red on his left cheek, imprinted segments of metal, doesn’t quite seem out of place. 

On the table is another paper cup, a thin wisp of steam escaping the holes in its lid. An opened box of donuts. Sugar crystal fingerprints on wood, next to a bowl of Korean noodle soup. 

Steve sits down, and takes one of the chocolate-glazed donuts, and blinks at a yawning James. “How -- ”

“I called in sick,” James mutters. “Also Wade called me and demanded I tell him where I was and when I told him I was here, he asked for your address so he could deliver some food.”

Steve stares at the donuts and then stares at James. “This is your friend whom you’re sort of looking after. He makes donuts?”

“Of course not. Wade’s hopeless with fried things. And I would never let him get within ten feet of a deep fryer. He says he has a source for these, he just ordered a box of donuts and then came here to deliver them.”

“You could’ve invited him in?”

“I told him you were stressed out. He understands that kind of thing. So he went home and told me he was home and -- breakfast.”

“Breakfast,” Steve repeats, faintly, and then he reaches for another donut. They’re _good_. Lemon glaze on this one, the right balance of sweet and tart. He has to make himself eat it slowly. It’s easier to think that he’ll never ask for the source of the donuts so he won’t be able to tell any of the others. He thinks about not sharing, except maybe with James.

A comfortable silence, which is broken when James chews and swallows a mouthful of noodles and asks, quietly, “Feel better?”

“I should be asking you that question,” Steve says. “It can’t have been comfortable, sleeping on the floor. I told you there was a couch. It’s not much, but -- ”

“I’ve slept in worse places.”

“You don’t have to.”

James shrugs. “Okay, so, I’ll nap on the damn couch if that’s going to stop you worrying at me.” 

Steve makes a face. “So you’re allowed to worry about me, but I’m not allowed to worry about you?”

He watches as James opens his mouth, and then closes it, and then: “I -- I dunno. Not a lot of people who do that. Worry about me.”

“Your friend Wade,” Steve begins. “Seo-yeong, and me. Still not a lot.”

That gets him a quiet laugh. 

Steve leans back in his chair and takes a swig of the coffee -- it can’t possibly compare with the donuts, much less the brew he gets at Taylor’s shop, but he appreciates it all the same. 

“Still haven’t answered my question,” James eventually says, after he pushes his bowl of noodles aside. Steve looks, and there are only a few curls of noodle left in the bottom, along with a slick of what he now knows is spicy-hell soup.

He takes another swig of coffee and tries to put his thoughts in order. “I slept. Not for a long time, but -- I slept, and I can’t remember if I dreamed or not, so I’ll count it as a victory and let it go.”

“But your memories.”

“I’ve tried to rush them. Doesn’t work,” and Steve finishes his coffee. “I’ve been waiting for them and waiting for them, and there’s nothing I can do but keep waiting for them.”

“Even when it means getting sick.”

Steve nods. “If it has to come to that. It’d be worth it.”

James raises an eyebrow. “William.”

“Yeah,” Steve answers, after a moment.

“Are you sure it’s worth it?”

“It’s still better than the alternative.”

“Which is?”

“I lose those memories permanently. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to lie to myself and say that only good memories were taken from me. From the looks on my friends’ faces that’s the complete opposite of the truth.” He looks away from the sympathetic expression in James’s eyes. “But I’ll take it. The good and the bad, when it all comes back. Those memories are part of me.”

“Some memories can kill,” a solemn James says, and reaches for a donut, as though to comfort himself.

Steve nods in understanding, and reaches across the table to clasp his shoulder. “Yeah.”

“I forgot you said you’d served too.”

“It isn’t just that. You have your nightmares, I have mine.”

“Yeah.” James yawns, then, with the crumbs of his donut still clinging to his fingers. “I know I said I was going to sleep.”

Steve waves in the direction of his bed. “Help yourself. Blankets and pillows over there.”

“Yeah,” James says again, and Steve passes him one of the extra pillows, before going back to the kitchen for another donut. 

By the time he’s done, he can hear James’s deep sleeping breaths again.

///

“Your couch is fucking lumpy,” James says, a few days later on the outskirts of Hell’s Kitchen, and Steve is just immensely grateful that he’d swallowed his mouthful of coffee in time. He still has to cough his way around a laugh. 

“I just got it from some random person on the Internet,” Steve says. “I wasn’t really expecting anyone to stay on it.”

“I’m not sleeping on it ever again,” James mutters rebelliously, and Steve watches him shove half a buttered roll into his mouth. “You couldn’t pay me to _sit_ on it. The floor’s more comfortable.”

“You should really treat your guests better,” and Taylor smells like lemons, tray in hand. There’s a slice of pale chiffon cake on a delicate silver-rimmed plate, which Steve eagerly cuts into bite-sized pieces; there’s a choux pastry nearly the size of Taylor’s fist, bursting with vanilla-fragrant cream, which James takes a picture of. 

“It’s not like I have a lot of guests over,” Steve says, raising a hand and his fork in self-defense.

“You do now, is what I’m hearing,” is Taylor’s retort, sweetened with a brief flash of a smile.

Steve sighs, shakes his head, slants an amused look in James’s direction. “Never going to live that down, am I.”

“Never.” James doesn’t even look up from cutting into his pastry.

Steve’s still trying to think of an answer to that when his phone rings, and when he looks at the screen -- “I have to take this,” he says.

James waves gleaming fingertips at him.

So Steve settles into his chair and hits _Answer_ and says, “Wanda.”

Her voice is kind and distant and a little breathless. “I was not sure that you would take my call.”

“Why wouldn’t I? And why do you sound like that?”

“We have been running,” is the reply. “Mostly running. There was some flying involved, too, for most of us. Attack and defense patterns. I am also helping Natasha to fly.”

Steve thinks about that, and smiles, and nods. “We’ll have a lot of interesting things to talk about when I come back.”

“Will that be any time soon?”

“No idea,” he admits, and he thinks he’s not imagining the sigh that he gets in response, so he adds, “But I’m getting better, I think. Some things are coming back. It’s still all in bits and pieces. Just have to keep waiting.”

“You sound -- not happy. Not precisely. But perhaps you sound, ah, what is the word? You sound like everything is all right with the world.”

“Coffee and cake and good company will do that to you,” he says, smiling.

“Ah.” And he can hear her smile, he thinks. “That is good. Congenial. May I ask about the company?”

“Sure,” and on a whim, Steve holds the phone out in James’s direction. “Say hello to one of my friends, James.”

“Hello,” James says as he waves briefly at the phone.

Steve puts the phone back to his ear. “That was him. James.”

“A man of few words, it seems.”

“Most of the time, yeah.”

“But if he makes you sound light-hearted, I am sure that I have no complaints.” A pause, and then: “I must admit, though, from the little I have heard of him -- I could swear that I have heard his voice before. Perhaps even recently.” Wanda clears her throat. “No matter. I do not wish to further intrude upon you.”

“You’re never an intrusion, Wanda, you know that,” Steve says.

“Thank you, Steve. I will call you again soon. Be well.”

“Be well,” Steve returns, and then there’s the quiet click of disconnection.

“Maybe she thought she was interrupting us,” James says around the last bite of choux. “Sorry about that.”

“She just wanted to check in on me,” Steve says, and turns his attention back to his cake. 

“She sounds nice.”

“She really is,” Steve says. 

“Bet you can’t wait to see her again. And all the others.”

A bite of cake. “I miss them a lot, that’s pretty much the truth -- but this is also nice. I can’t remember what it’s like to be on leave. On vacation. I’ve been busy, and if I haven’t been busy I think I’ve had a lot of things on my mind.”

“Including the things you’re currently _missing_ from your mind.”

“Particularly that, I think.” Steve sips his coffee. “Sometimes I think I’m being irresponsible, and sometimes I think that I actually feel relieved, and sometimes I just want to remember everything.”

“I feel the opposite,” James mutters after a moment. “The things I’m remembering are not exactly good things. I’d rather not, thanks.”

Steve nods, understanding. “Some people would suggest something like therapy.”

“Been there, done that, or how else could I be living out in the world? Doesn’t mean I’ve stopped waking up from nightmares. Doesn’t mean I’ve gotten over the shakes. Doesn’t mean there aren’t still days I’d rather hole up at home and kind of hide from the rest of the world.”

“I’ve been there, too.”

“I know you have,” James says, and pushes his coffee away, but quietly.

“Sorry,” Steve says.

“Don’t be. Nothing to be sorry for. Just a messed-up head.”

“That makes two of us.” Steve finishes his coffee. “Come on, let’s take a walk.”

He watches James scramble out of his seat, and wave an unsteady goodbye at Taylor. The weather’s turned while they were inside the coffee shop, the blue skies now dotted with threatening patches of deep gray, towering clouds amid towering buildings and the construction that seems to be going on everywhere in the Kitchen. 

He walks beside a hunched-over James, and thinks about what Wanda’s said: that she thinks James’s voice is familiar, that she thinks she’s heard his voice before, and then the real voice breaks into his thoughts: “I get up, sometimes, in the middle of the night -- I mean, after I’m sure that Wade’s safe and sleeping like he’s supposed to be, after I know that Seo-yeong’s okay, and -- and then I just walk. Like, I go over the fences into Prospect Park and just -- go around, sit on the shores of the lake until the sun comes up -- ”

“I thought that was what you used that container terminal for -- ”

“That’s one of the other places, wise guy.”

“Okay,” Steve says. “Sorry. Go on.”

“And sometimes I’m not sure if I’m asleep or awake but I look into the lake water and I wonder what’d happen if I dipped my hands in -- would they come up clean? Or would there still be blood on them? I have these memories -- all those faces -- all that _time_ \-- do you know how long it’s been, for me?”

Steve stops him from walking blindly into an intersection: catches him by the wrist and drags him to a nearby stoop. “Sit down,” he says, firm but gentle, and James does, and he sits down next to him, shoulder to shoulder. “Stand down,” he adds. “Not in the war right now, soldier. Look around you. Take a deep breath.”

James takes a deep breath, and another, and Steve nods, encouragingly. “There’s a stupid sign across the street,” James mutters after a moment.

Steve looks. A big dog being menaced by a tiny cat. Lettering proclaiming some kind of Internet service. What do the animals have to do with anything? “Yeah. It _is_ a stupid sign.”

“Sorry,” James says, eventually. “Zoned out.”

“I know. I was listening. It’s been a long time, too, for me. Sometimes it feels like I’ve been fighting my whole life. You go up a hill and you have no idea whether you’ll be able to get to the top, much less go back down. You go to sleep in the mud, thinking you and yours are safe, and wake up a few hours later with the stink of gunpowder and piss in your nose.” Steve folds his hands together. “You have to carry your things and then you’re told to go carry bodies, too. You can’t change your socks for weeks.”

That last gets him a weak laugh. “Yeah. That. Socks.”

“Do you want to get stuck remembering things like that,” Steve asks, quietly, “or do you want to think about, hey, someone’s cooking burgers somewhere, and we’ve just had some coffee and some cake and whatever it was that you were eating -- ”

“ -- best cream puff ever -- ”

“And we’re here and alive and we’re not _there_ in those dark places, not any more, they’re behind us for the time being?”

“For the time being,” James echoes. Another series of deep breaths. “You’re good at this. I think.”

“I just stole it from someone who helped me out when I was in a bad place.”

“How often do you go back there, to your bad place?”

“Before all this business with me losing my memories or -- ?”

James shrugs. Tries to sit a little closer. Steve doesn’t move away. “I don’t know. You tell me.”

“I’d say pretty often, if I’ve wound up memorizing some of the things my friend would tell me.”

James doesn’t answer, at least not in words: instead he sighs, he covers his eyes with one hand -- 

And then he -- he _collapses_ , is what Steve thinks. James turns and grabs on and Steve lets him, lets him burrow in close, and Steve puts his arms around him, pulling him in. Quiet hiccuping hitching sobs. Steve grits his teeth and holds James.

“What the hell have they done to me,” he hears James say. “And what the hell have they done to you. It’s. No words. They’ve wrecked us.”

“Yeah, yeah they did,” Steve says, and there is something _right_ and _real_ about this, about James pouring his heart out, while Steve does what he can to hold him together. “And we can stay wrecked, or we can pick ourselves and each other back up, or -- ”

“Or survive.”

“Survive. Yeah. That sounds good.”

He feels rather than hears it when James takes in a deep tearstained breath. “When I was in therapy I had to settle for just being able to get through the day. But -- there’s coffee. There’s pancakes. There’s Seo-yeong and the kimchi she makes. If I went away -- if I just ate a gun -- I’d lose all of that. And I wouldn’t have met you.”

Steve gives him a lopsided smile when he sits up and scrubs roughly at his cheeks. “I’m glad you didn’t,” is all he says.

And then, because James has said all that, he returns the favor. “I should apologize, because I -- I’m hiding a lot of things from you. What I do. Things about my friends.”

“If that’s what you need to do to stay sane,” James begins.

“That’s not the only thing. It’s also because -- and don’t take this the wrong way -- I gotta keep you safe.”

“That sounds nice.”

“You’re not going to tell me you don’t need protecting?”

It’s James’s turn for a quirk of a smile. “I just sort of fell to pieces right there in front of you, I don’t have much pride left today.”

“Okay.” Steve decides not to press that point. “So. Keeping you safe. Not telling you everything about me. But you know the important things. Not just my memories, but -- you know. The places and the people I run to when I’m in trouble. The things that bother me. The things that make me feel better. But I haven’t said much about -- about the other things.”

“What other things?”

“Maybe it’s part of my memories coming back, maybe not,” Steve says, focusing on keeping his clasped hands from shaking. “But I wake up and think I’m falling. Ice rushing up to meet me. Or something big and dying is rushing down towards me. Either way -- there’s this feeling of being crushed and helpless. And I’m left thinking that maybe things would be easier if I just let it all go, if I just let it all end. I mean -- how many times have I jumped out of an airplane without a parachute? How many times have my friends yelled at me for charging headlong into a fight that no one knew anything about, that they had no idea if I’d even survive?”

He doesn’t know why he then feels a pressure around his clasped hands: a pressure that is created by James holding on to him, as though they were sharing the responsibility of protecting a guttering flame, as though they were sharing the duty of holding on to something important.

And James is speaking to him, softly, the words cutting through the rising noise in his head, noise like falling into Arctic waters: “Stay here, stay here, with me, don’t you fucking let go -- ”

Steve closes his eyes, and homes in on that voice, that familiar voice -- when had he heard it, he’d heard it before, he’d heard it over and over again, how was it here with him, he’d fall to pieces without it -- and he grabs on, blind and helpless and drowning -- 

Rush of white noise in his ears, as though he’d passed through time and ice and churning waters -- a whispering voice, pulling him up to breathe, and he’s been here before, he’s been here too many times -- 

He opens his eyes.

And the man holding his hands is -- James.

 _James_ , and the words that go with it, the rest of the name.

_James Buchanan Barnes._

“Bucky,” Steve says.

The face of the man next to him -- shadowed. Bitten lips. Tear streaks. A mixture of fear and fondness in those eyes.

“Yeah, someone used to call me that,” James-who-is-Bucky says. “From Brooklyn to Azzano to far too many places to count. From Washington to -- to here. Funny how we’re here, just across the bridge from home, just across the bridge from where I met this kid. This little kid with a heart that could take on the world. I knew him as Steve. But you asked me to call you William.”

And Steve takes a deep breath. “That’s not my name, not my real name. I -- I was hiding -- I wanted to take a break from everything -- I’m Steve. Steve Rogers.”

Bucky smiles. “I’m Bucky. I’m James. Call me by either name. They’re both me. I’m here.”

“I forgot you,” Steve says.

“No. You didn’t forget me. You were trying to remember me.”

“But I -- ”

“You told me, Steve. You told me what happened to you. Someone hit you with some kind of magic and you were forced to forget me. But you were trying so hard to remember. You said so yourself. You remember now. I’m here and you’re here,” Bucky says, and is Bucky crying, or is that just Steve’s own tears, blurring out all the world except for Bucky’s face? 

That familiar, beloved face. Steve reaches out to him, tentative, and finds warmth beneath his fingertips. Salt and pain and lines in skin. Tears and a smile, all at once.

“Bucky,” Steve finally says. “Bucky. You -- I -- I’ve been looking all over the world for you, I’ve been so worried -- _where have you been_ \-- ”

A soft, weary laugh. 

The block in his mind fails, and the memories come flooding back, and Steve is grateful they’re already sitting down.

Bucky doesn’t look like the sergeant in the blue coat, and doesn’t look like the killer with the dead eyes. Older and sweeter and a little more bowed down by time, by the years, and he smiles like the boy that Steve now remembers, the young man who’d taken such care polishing his shoes. 

And Bucky is talking: “I’ve been -- I’ve been. Surviving. Trying to remember everything -- you should see the walls in my room, all the history, all the terrible things they made me do. But you’re there, too. You’re there. I fought to remember you. Some days you were all I had against the pain. Against the guilt and the shame. What I was, what I’d done, all the blood and all the dead. I would think of you.”

“You said you went to therapy,” Steve says. “I went to therapy too. Sort of. I know someone who’s good at that sort of thing. Gave me advice. He went with me, when I was looking for you. We got interrupted too many times. I needed to find you, but the world kept needing me. My team. I want you to meet my team. My friends.”

Bucky is nodding. “Yes. And you have to meet Wade. Maybe I’m a little rude to him but -- but yeah, he’s my friend. Him and Seo-yeong. And now -- now there’s you.”

“Bucky,” is all Steve can say.

Impulsively, he cups Bucky’s head in his hands. Impulsively, he kisses Bucky’s forehead.

Warmth runs through him: the feeling of something _right_.

“That felt good,” Bucky says, and the next thing Steve knows, Bucky’s returning the gesture. The flesh hand and the metal hand, holding him gently in place. The press of Bucky’s mouth. 

Steve clings to him.

///

The voices on the line might be subdued, but he can hear excitement and happiness all the same, and Steve can’t help but smile, as he finishes the story of the past few days.

Sam’s words, stern and kind at the same time, cut through the clamor. “Listen to me, Steve, all right: just because this happened -- and we’re happy for you, no fooling, I’m watching Wanda dance in mid-air right now -- just because this happened doesn’t mean you’re speeding back here.”

“I’ve been gone long enough,” Steve says, looking in the general direction of a certain little Korean grocery.

“Yes and no. You’ve been gone, yeah, and we miss you, but think about it. When was the last time you had a chance to be _Steve Rogers_ and not, you know, the guy in the blue suit with the shield? Because we can do without that guy for a couple more weeks -- it’ll just mean we’ll have more stories to tell you -- but no one, and I mean _no one_ , is gonna be happy if you come back here looking like the -- ” A pause. “Natasha, help me out here,” Sam continues.

“What Sam means to say,” and Steve instinctively sits up straighter when Natasha’s voice comes on the line, “is that we want to see you safe. We want to see you whole. Not hurting. Not coming undone.” A brief scuffle. “Here’s Wanda.”

“We do not wish you to remain in mourning,” Wanda says. “We wish you only true happiness. And the time to truly drink in that happiness that you say you have found.”

“I want to come back,” Steve says, “and I want to stay here, and -- well. Are you guys sure you’ll do fine without me? Another week, another month?”

“Maybe not that long,” Sam says. “But you gotta take it easy, you gotta be happy, you gotta spend time with your people who aren’t us.” An exasperated breath. “I can’t _believe_ your boy was just in Brooklyn all this time.”

“Imagine how _I_ felt,” Steve says. “It was like getting smashed in the face with my own shield, and I speak from experience.”

“Throw it wrong or something?”

“Or something,” Steve says, and he’s about to elaborate when his phone beeps at him and -- “Guys, I’ll be back, I have to answer this one.”

“If it’s Barnes, we’re hanging up,” Natasha says with a quiet laugh.

Steve blushes and is glad that no one can see him. “Um, it is.”

“We are hanging up,” Wanda says. “Be well, Steve.”

“You guys, too,” Steve says, and then he hits the other button and says, “Sorry, sorry, the others were on the line.”

“Sorry about that,” Bucky says, and maybe he sounds a little cheerful, and maybe he also sounds a little bit muffled. There’s a pause, and then, more clearly: “And sorry I was talking with my mouth full. Pancakes. Wade’s doing shapes today.” Another pause. “No, I don’t think you can do the Starship _Enterprise_.”

Steve hears a muffled “Watch me!” and can’t help but shake his head. “You’re catching up better on this century than I am.”

“Only because Seo-yeong _loves_ Star Trek. With Korean subtitles or something. I’ve gotten used to hearing the speeches they make. Sounds like there’s one every episode.”

A noise in the background of Bucky’s call.

Steve wants to pinch himself. He’s having a perfectly ordinary conversation with Bucky. Bucky is alternating between talking with his mouth full, and mouthing off at someone else who is most likely to be Wade. He sounds happy, or at least he sounds well-fed, and Steve wants nothing more than to be there, than to just watch the byplay, and he almost misses Bucky, saying his name: “Steve.”

He blinks. “Yeah?”

“You want to come over? I can’t promise Betty Crocker here won’t try to stuff you full of pancakes -- but, yeah, I did say you should see the walls in my room. I’ll text you my address.”

“I can bring you something from Seo-yeong’s place,” Steve offers.

“Yeah, actually, that -- that sounds good. Maybe something else to eat, I mean, to go with the leftover pancakes.”

Before Steve can answer, there’s a triumphant shout that carries right over Bucky’s last words. “One Starship _Enterprise_ with all the butter and syrup! Ha!” And: “Hello, James’s person, I am going to stay at the hospital tonight so please come and keep him company!”

Steve blinks again, and when Bucky comes back on, he asks, “Is something wrong with him?”

“You mean aside from the obsession with pancakes? Nah, Wade’s just going in for a checkup. Happens every month or so. They keep him overnight for observations, refill his prescriptions, that kind of thing. He’s all right.”

“Okay,” Steve says, and he goes to look for his shoes and his jacket and the various things that live in his pockets. Briefly he pauses, and then -- it can’t hurt -- he tucks his toothbrush into his jacket.

Seo-yeong beams at him from behind the counter when he comes in to pick something out for Bucky, and even says, “He particularly likes the mushroom-flavored ramyeon.”

Steve plays along. “What does it taste like?”

“Spices. Mushroom. I don’t know why he puts corn in his noodles. I don’t.”

“Maybe he picked it up from somewhere else.”

“Not from here,” and Seo-yeong makes a face, and Steve laughs as he says goodbye.

After getting turned around twice in a network of tree-shadowed streets Steve finds the right set of landmarks, and it takes him only a few minutes to ring the doorbell to Bucky’s place.

The door opens to a shout of “Hold on a minute!” and the thumps of what Steve thinks might be boots on the stomping move, and then he has to step aside as both Bucky and a man with a pocked and scarred face make their way to the door. 

“Hey, Steve,” Bucky says.

“I’m confused now,” the other man says. “You said his name was William, now you’re calling him Steve, or -- ” and here he stares at Steve, “ -- do you have several first names?”

Steve shrugs. “I was sort of incognito. Name’s Steve.”

The answering handshake is firm. “Wade. You take care of him for me. Buh-bye now.”

Bucky is smiling, just a slight sliver of amusement, when Steve looks in his direction. 

Together they watch Wade turn the corner and vanish.

“Come on up,” Bucky says, eventually. “It’s kind of a small place, but we’ll manage.”

“It’s still bigger than some of the rooms we used to occupy,” Steve says.

“I don’t remember all of those rooms, not enough to tell them apart, but -- yeah, I remember that much, there never was enough space.”

“Couldn’t afford anything bigger,” Steve says as they step into the kitchen. And then he grins, because apparently no one ate the pancake shaped like the _Enterprise_.

“You can have that,” Bucky says. “Someone has to eat it.”

“Wade won’t mind?”

“No, he took pictures.”

So Steve takes the fork that Bucky offers him, and in exchange, hands over the bag of Korean food. 

“Seo-yeong ratted me out, didn’t she,” an amused Bucky says as he fills a pot with water.

“She told me which kind of noodles you liked, yes.”

“And the rest?”

Steve shrugs. “Nothing wrong with chocolate.”

Bucky smiles, and turns his attention to his noodles, and Steve takes the opportunity to look around. Cramped as the kitchen is, there are no pots or utensils out of place. The plates in the dish rack are mismatched, as are the coffee cups and the cutlery; and there is no real stove anywhere in sight. Bucky is doing his cooking on the kind of small, fuel-canister-fired stove that Steve has seen in stores that sell camping gear. 

Salt and spices in the air as Bucky transfers the cooked noodles to an oversized bowl.

Steve watches him eat, and thinks idly about remembering the image. Maybe he can draw Bucky and his ramyeon dinner.

“Do you want some?” Bucky asks, eventually. 

“I’m good, thanks,” Steve says, and forks up the last bit of pancake. 

He’s making to collect the dirty dishes when Bucky raises an eyebrow at him. 

“You cooked, so you’re not cleaning,” Steve says, and moves toward the sink.

“Technically it was Wade who did the cooking. I’m used to doing his dishes.”

Steve lets the water run a little warmer. “I don’t mind, seriously.”

Bucky makes a put-upon face.

Steve makes the face back.

After a moment, Bucky snorts, and takes a chocolate bar out of the bag, and breaks it in half. “You’re having some.”

“I never say no to free chocolate -- not after all the shit so-called candy we had in the war,” Steve says, and starts scrubbing.

Clean-up takes all of a few minutes and then Steve reaches for the other half of the chocolate bar, before following Bucky into the next room.

He stops short on the threshold.

He watches as Bucky turns back. That smile is now tinged with a dark bitterness. “Here it is, Steve. Here’s where it’s all laid out. Everything I can remember.” There are gaps in the timeline: entire years, entire clusters of years, that remain blank and mute and missing. 

Steve steps towards the wall, and touches the beginning of the timeline. The label _1950_ under his fingertips. Scribbled notes just a few inches away. _Snow. Cryo. Short circuits._

He looks over his shoulder, helplessly. 

Bucky is sitting on the bed with his chin resting on his knees and his arms wrapped around his legs.

Steve wants to follow the timeline, wants to _know_ what HYDRA has done -- and he also aches to be next to Bucky, because he’s missed him, in the very visceral sense.

He can look at this wall again. He can’t stand looking at Bucky looking so forlorn.

He crosses to the bed and sits very close to Bucky, just within a hair’s-breadth of touching. He asks for permission. “Can I?”

For a moment, for a very long moment, Bucky freezes. Blankness in his face, in the cramped lines around his eyes. 

And then he turns to Steve, he lets Steve see the tears, and says, “Why?”

It’s one word and it’s the most complicated question in the world.

Steve can’t help but begin to answer by reaching out -- his fingers stop inches short of Bucky’s arm -- and his own voice is rough around the edges when he says, “Because you’ve been through so much and yet. Here you are. You’re taking care of yourself. You’re taking care of Wade. You’re -- you’re amazing, you’ve always been. You’re here. And I’m grateful. So stupid grateful, I don’t have words for it.” How he wants to close that distance between them. It’s so hard to hold back. So hard to pull his hand away.

“Amazing. How can I be amazing when the walls -- ”

“Wasn’t you,” Steve says. He does make contact, then: he takes Bucky’s hand in both of his own. “I’ve read some of the files. I can fill in some of the gaps. You fought the programming every way you could. You never stopped fighting them.”

Bucky shifts just a little closer, and Steve, encouraged, keeps holding his hand.

“They had to keep wiping my mind,” Bucky says, after a moment. “I kept remembering you. Even when I thought you were just someone I’d made up. I still kept looking over my shoulder to see if you were there.”

Steve nods.

“And then I found you but -- ” Bucky laughs, soft and bitter, and finally leans against Steve’s shoulder.

Steve shifts to accommodate him, and he winds up holding Bucky in his arms.

Bucky feels solid and real. A faint smell of woodsmoke and sea salt in his hair. The reality of the stubble on his cheeks and jaw.

“The last time I held you like this was after Azzano,” Steve murmurs, almost without thinking about it. “You were trying to stay on your feet.”

“Needed your help,” Bucky whispers.

“And yet you walked back into the camp on your own two feet. I should have said something then.”

“Said what?”

“That they ought to have been cheering for you. You stayed alive. You helped the others stay alive. You were just as much of a hero as I was. Maybe even more. All I did was get you out of there.”

“You saved my ass, Steve, you deserved the applause and the cheering -- ”

“All the way until I lost you -- ”

Impossibly, Bucky tries to get closer, and all Steve can do is hold him more tightly.

“All those years I forgot you,” Bucky says.

“And then it was my turn,” Steve says, and daringly he presses a kiss into Bucky’s hair. “Sorry about that.”

“Not your fault. It was magic. Some kinda shit like that. Maybe it was for the best.”

Steve blinks. “For the best how?”

“Brought you back here.” And there’s a touch in the general vicinity of his throat, soft and firm and gentle. 

“And here we are,” Steve says, his heart pounding.

“Here we are,” is Bucky’s response. 

When he looks up, Steve nods, though he can’t read Bucky’s eyes. All he knows is that Bucky looks as he must have just a few minutes ago, waiting for permission to move closer.

“Maybe it’s time for us to do something new.”

Steve’s nod is cut short by a hesitant smile, and Bucky’s kiss.

A kiss that is over too soon. 

Steve smiles, and says, “Didn’t catch that, sorry, have to do it again.”

Bucky laughs. 

They kiss, again, as gently and as carefully as the first time. A little longer this time. 

Steve lets Bucky draw away, but he doesn’t go that far: he goes back to holding on, after, and again Steve kisses his hair.

“Something new,” Bucky says, again. “How long were we waiting to do that?”

“Maybe most of my life,” Steve says, and as the words come out he realizes that they’re true. “But somehow we never got around to it.”

“Regrets?”

“About kissing? None whatsoever. The lost time? Maybe a little. HYDRA? I don’t have regrets so much as I want to go out there and kick their sorry asses straight into hell. Or other places worse than hell. If any of those places exist.”

“Kind of beat you to that,” Bucky says.

“Yeah, you did.” When Bucky pulls away, Steve reluctantly lets him go. He only comes close again once Bucky has settled on the pillows, once Bucky has held out a hand to him. “Do _you_ have any regrets?”

“I do. About a lot of things. But _not_ about kissing you.” And Bucky holds on, more tightly, and Steve lets him: Steve never wants to let him go.

Bucky tugs on him, an undeniable gravity, and Steve goes, Steve leans in, Steve smiles: and Steve doesn’t close his eyes. He wants to see Bucky until he can’t. He wants to be here, in this moment, in this man’s arms. 

Every kiss is new, and yet familiar: it is as if he’s always been waiting to kiss Bucky, and to be kissed by Bucky. Easy to learn the curve of Bucky’s mouth. The rasp of five-o’clock shadow. Bucky’s hands, catching him and holding him and keeping him close. 

///

“I’m not yet all here,” Bucky says, eventually. 

Steve murmurs, “I know, Bucky, I know.” He punctuates the words with kisses. 

“And you. I worry about you.” 

“I may have to try therapy again, and not just dump all my problems on my friends. Even if they’re willing to listen to me,” Steve says, nodding. “But -- together, we can do this together, we can keep going if we’re together. Is that -- I hope that’s something you want.”

Bucky’s answering smile is slow and sweet and sharp. “If you think for a moment I’m letting you go, you’d better think again.”

Steve grins back. “I wouldn’t dare. And yet -- and yet you’ve got a life here. And eventually I have to go back to my team.” He lets the grin falter. He lets himself look solemnly at an equally hushed Bucky. “There’s that.”

“We’ll work it out.” There’s a stubborn set to Bucky’s mouth, one that Steve can now remember, from Brooklyn streets to battlefields -- and there’s hope, too, faint and fleeting and fragile. “We have to.”

“We will,” Steve says. “That’s a promise.”

A kiss, a wish, a benediction. 

Something real. Something to remember.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2015 Marvel Bang @ http://marvel-bang.livejournal.com/
> 
> Betaed by luninosity and salamanders.scribe
> 
> \-----
> 
> I am also on [tumblr](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art for Lacunae by ilovetakahana (ninemoons42) for the 2015 Marvel Big Bang](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5038735) by [paleogymnast](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paleogymnast/pseuds/paleogymnast)




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